Subtrahend

Friday, December 10, 2004

    We Recycle


    "I thought I asked you to take out the garbage?"

    "Just getting around to it, my dear."

    "No; take it out now. I'm sick of this."

    "Yes, my sweet. My honeyed popcorn. My smiling rhododendron. My jet-puffed marshmallow. My mode d'emploi. My zero tolerance policy. My sweet jar o' nothin'. My junk food snack."

    "Are you going to take it out or not?"

    "I have the task in hand; I'm taking a studio portrait of it; I'm just checking it for ID; I'm trembling at its frown; I'm running it through ballistics." In fact I did approach the garbage with a lukewarm desire to deal with it as she had suggested, but I noticed that in the top of the crowded sack there was a perfectly good ballpoint pen. "You're not throwing that away, surely - it's perfectly good."

    "Oh, it's - "

    "And look here: a cardboard box to put stuff in, also in good condition." I pushed up my sleeves and began sifting through the surface layers for more. "Why, I'm amazed," I said. "So much stuff. And maybe something I've lost. You throw that many things out, there might be some real treasures among them, my pet. My daily special. My best-before date. My all-natural seasoning. My smoke-free environment."

    "Just - take it out. Okay?"

    I shoved everything back, briskly tied the neck of the sack, hauled it from the receptacle and bore it from the apartment. It was fairly heavy, and I had to stop twice for a better grip on it, but finally I reached the depths of the courtyard, lit up as if for an emergency landing. With a dopey laugh - the laugh that I have found a million uses for - with this laugh I threw the last week of our life together into a blue dumpster.


     — posted by P | at 7:25 AM | |

Thursday, December 09, 2004

    Babelfish!


    · It's a handy resource. But you have to watch it closely. Here's what happens if you translate a simple text into a language and then re-translate your result into English (I thought the translation looked a bit funny):

    I read in the newspaper the other day that some scientists were trying to breed octopus, since they are an endangered species.
    being interpreted means:
    I read inside newspaper another day that some scientific workers they attempted to divorce octopus, in the form of the fact that they will be the threatened forms.
    I guess it's all right, if a little awkward. But if you had to edit a really long thing in this robot subdialect, you'd soon find yourself questioning everything. Eventually you'd be talking to your friends in this bizarro manner.

    There's an old story about some Russian writer who was in London and on his way to an appointment. Having no watch, he asked a man in the street: "Excuse me; what is time?", and the man frowned and said: "Yes, that's a question that has puzzled philosophers for ages. I'm not really sure of the answer."


     — posted by P | at 7:25 AM | |

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Monday, November 29, 2004

    · An interesting photograph I found in a book: Heitor Villa-Lobos on the blower, apparently chortling away at something and looking like George Gershwin: In one hand he's holding the telephone and a cigar, in the other the telephone's earpiece. I would like to know who he's talking to. His agent? Samuel Barber?




    ILLUSTRATIONS

    BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS
      HER VOICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


    THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS CALLING
      IN HIS EARS NOW . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL . . . . . . .

    SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE FEET OF
      BA'TISTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE
      ROCK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    "THEY SHOT AT ME AN' HURT ME" . . . . . . . .

    "PAULINE," HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND FAINTED IN HER
      ARMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    "AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO—AS PURTY AND STRAIGHT
      BEWHILES" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



    Frontispiece

    facing p. 14

    "facing p.36

    "facing p.56

    "facing p.70

    "facing p.74

    "facing.114

    "facing.256





    If you'e looking through an old novel with illustrated plates, you can sometimes guess at the story without actually reading it just by looking at the captions. Here are some: "'PON MY HONOR,' HE SAID, IN A LOW TONE, 'YOU HAVE CAUGHT ME.'" "HE FELL ON HIS KNEES, AND BEGGED FOR MERCY." "THE MAN AT THE WINDOW TURNED AND LOOKED CURIOUSLY AT HER."


     — posted by P | at 10:24 AM | |

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

    Fun with Tables


    · You can also make your own yellowing news clippings:

    FACTS ABOUT CANADA

    The distance between Halifax, N.S., and Vancouver, B.C., by the most direct railway route, is 3,646 miles, which is 615 miles more than the distance between London, England, and Constantinople, Turkey, by the trans-European railway.

    The distance between London and Paris, France, is only miles times greater than the distance between Halifax, N.S., and St. John, N.B., the latter distance being 278.5 miles by rail.


    		The distance between Halifax, N.S., and Vancouver, B.C., by the most direct railway route, is 3,646 miles.

    Nevertheless, distances such as these tell us little about the condition of men's souls, and therefore I say: Gird yourself for the great battle! .
    The distance between Satan and all we hold dear is not that great, my friend. See to it. Fail not herein, or face the dire consequences. And now back to your newspaper.

    What you could do is assemble these two things, this coloured table and the headlines below, and create an on-line newspaper that would look just like, say, The North Bay Nugget, circa 1930. That would be interesting. You could of course incorporate all kinds of buttons and javascript effects, but in some way designed to fit in with the period. A bit of research could help.

    For example, old newspapers have highly stylized advertising in them. It wouldn't be too hard to reproduce the effect after some experimentation.

    Just imagine the fun!

    Apparently the US President is going to visit Halifax next week. Already there are posters up calling the Trots to action. They want to cause a brouhaha and protest all kinds of things, but I think people ought to be polite when some head of state is in town. What's the good of making a spectacle of oneself?


     — posted by P | at 1:44 PM | |

Monday, November 22, 2004

    Carnival


    Not many people know this, but Camille Saint-Saëns badly needed a vacation after a busy period at the École normale. His students clamoured, "Don't forget to bring us back something! A fugue, perhaps." M. Saint-Saëns chuckled and waved goodbye from the departing train.

    A few days later he was strolling along the Boulevard des anglais in Nice and it occurred to him: "I really should get the students something, as they've worked so very hard. Let's see - " And he stepped into a gift shop.

    "I was looking for a gift," he said to the woman behind the counter, "what would you suggest for, oh, fifty piano students?"

    The woman thought for a moment. "How old are they? Cologne is always good. Or some cigarettes."

    M. Saint-Saëns said: "You seem to be terribly concerned about it. Why don't I leave you here to worry the problem to death and come back later, when you've recovered your equanimity?" Of course, he already knew what he would bring the students. Nothing less than "Le carnaval des animaux" would do. "Ain't nothing too good for those guys," he thought, roughing out the first piece. He continued to work on it in the lounge car of the train, finally producing 14 short pieces, each full of musical gags and references.

    And what a surprise for the students! They chortled and hugged themselves with glee as they looked over the score. "Oh, sir," they cried, "It's frightfully wizard of you!" "Yes, and look at this: 'Fossils', to be played allegro ridicolo that's ever so funny, sir." They all fell to playing the various pieces as if there were no tomorrow. M. Saint-Saëns smiled indulgently. Then he clapped his hands for silence.

    "There's one thing, though," he said, "This is just a sort of amusement. I don't want any of it published, or even performed in public." The students howled in protest, but he was adamant.

    "But sir," said little Alfred, his favourite, "What about no. 13 - 'The Swan?' Of all the pieces it's the most beautiful." And he wiped away a tear. The others all consulted their scores. It was true: unlike the rest of the suite, "The Swan" was pure grace. Saint-Saëns relented. "All right, then. 'The Swan' can be played outside of this class. But that's it."

    And up until his death no complete score of "Carnaval" was published, nor was the suite performed in its entirety. He did, however, allow No.13, "The Swan", to be played, because it is so beautiful. And it is also the only thing of his that people play now.


     — posted by P | at 1:12 PM | |

Friday, November 19, 2004

    · I wish I had some clear idea (or any idea) about the next four years. A lot can happen in that time. Or maybe nothing can happen. I have the feeling that these next years are going to sound as if they had been in parentheses. If people can keep talking about Paris Hilton then there can't be anything going on.

    The reason I say this is we've had some cold weather and I can't find my hat. I had to go out and buy a ridiculous one at Canadian Tire.


     — posted by P | at 1:21 PM | |

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

    Humour, etc.


    · A co-worker was lauging at a joke today. That's a good thing. Laughter is the best medicine.

    However, I couldn't help noticing that the laughter was forced, as if done with an effort. The effect was almost the opposite of what was no doubt intended—a cry for help. And not difficult to see why, since the "joke" was tired, useless and boring. In fact, was it a joke at all? I've no idea.


     — posted by P | at 12:53 PM | |

Thursday, November 11, 2004

    Entering and Leaving the House is Fun


    · I love my neighbours, but whenever we meet on the elevator they look at me as if they've heard that I regularly come home drunk and make my wife get up on the table and dance like a bear. I don't do that regularly by any means.

    Now I'm watching a queer Québecois movie in which a man is spending time with his girlfiend when suddenly she turns into a large creepy puppet. They ought to advise viewers of this sort of thing: "This programme contains scenes of extraordinary weirdness". Oh, look, now it's back to normal. Our hero rings the bell at a castle and a bald man looks at him from the roof. "Yes? What is it?" "I wonder if I could have a moment of your time to conduct a survey about snacks in use in your household." "That sounds good. I'll be right down."


     — posted by P | at 9:51 PM | |

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

    Sad Day for Some


    · Quite a few people have been feeling a bit moody over the US election results. From the comments at Maxspeak (no. 10):

    Whether that signals vast stupidity or just horrible voter education, I'll leave the proof to you. But the simple fact is that Bush won because large majorities of his supporters had no idea what he actually stands for.
    That seems like a common reaction in several comment threads.

    A while back I thought George W. Bush would win the election easily, but over the last two months I started to think Kerry had a good chance. There was a growing number of bad things for the Republicans, people were writing books, the Swift Boat cranks didn't really connect. I also had the impression that Bush was getting a tad weary of all this president twaddle. But to beat the incumbent you need some big, clear, positive message. Here are a few more reactions:

    Unqualified Offerings offers some sober views, among them:

    Also, it appears that the Republicans will have won thanks to their direst characteristics, reifying of the national security state and codifying the moral outlook of a particular slice of Christendom into law.

    Steve Gilliard writes a long, personal reflection which ought to console people. "Compared to the last year, another year of Bush is not what I've wanted, but I've seen worse", he concludes. If you scroll down a bit you'll find some detailed receipts for comfort food—sea food, desserts, etc.

    Orcinus has an interesting and substantial point which, as he notes, he has made before:

    If Democrats were to actually pay attention to the problems of rural America and try to address them in a serious fashion, they would begin to make inroads on this nonsensical monopoly on the rural vote. [...] If progressives are serious about making a real effort at rebuilding their political machinery from the ground up, they need to start by going back to their rural roots. And it can't just be lip service.
    (And those dots represent quite a lot of profitable argument).

    One question that keeps bobbing up: should Democrats hew to their usual values, or should they whip out some winning if dodgy tactics? Should they, in effect, become more like the party they are trying to defeat? I've really no idea. It seems as if mainstream political parties all over have become a strangely homogenous dog's breakfast these past thirty years, and that's why elections always boil down to some awfully unimportant, personal things, which somehow cause even more rancour and bile on both sides. If they stuck to real issues, then the electorate might ignore an expensive haircut or a funny shape in the back of a guy's jacket. But taken in full they're not that far apart on policy. So everyone gets to analyze the latest photo session or awkward half-sentence for signs of treachery, vanity, or downwright wickedness.

    Music-Related Factoid: I've often seen a particular photograph of the Cotton Club on the covers of books or LPs. It's the one where there's a cab (and no other vehicles) parked in front, taken in 1940. I think people have also anachronistically used the image as a basis for illustrative matter having to do with the Jazz Age or the Harlem Renaissance. Forget about that. The important thing is if you look closely you'll see two small signs on either side of the marquee saying "Dinner $1.50". That would be about $20.35 in today's money. Seems like a bargain.

    A Quotation: "People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success." — Robert Benchley, on Abie's Irish Rose, by Anne Nichols, which ran for 2,327 performances.


     — posted by P | at 5:11 PM | |

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

    Election Night TV Watching


    · On another channel: some grumpy Australian police, having a big grumpathon around a conference table. People in Britain and Australia seem to take police work very seriously. Watch Prime Suspect sometime. Whine whine whine. They spend more time in heated office politics than in catching criminals. On Prime Suspect they average about one case per year. Also they suffer from wordless female vocals wherever they go, that's enough to get anyone down, I suppose.


     — posted by P | at 10:27 PM | |

    · Elsewhere on TV ... a crazed Sandra Bullock is running around in a life jacket, her fellow shipmates are arguing with each other about jumping off the boat in the usual downpour. Lifeboats are falling over the side like toys off the edge of a bathtub. Lights are flashing all over the place. There seem to be lots of problems. Oh no! It's stuck. Guys are tumbling out of the jammed lifeboats. If the sound were on, you could probably hear a gale blowing and people shouting "Hold on!" or "Let go!", as the case may be. Sandra Bullock is trapped on the gangplank with some coward.

    And what's this? On the bridge things aren't going too well either: something scary on the radar. The crew has to argue about it. I told you to get off this vessel, mister! And that's a direct order! No, wait, Captain. Just let me try something on the computer. I think I can access— *Kabooom!* Willem Dafoe has somehow caused an explosion. Now they're in really bad shape. All the lights are going on and off. Water starts rushing in. I'd say it's time to jump ship.


     — posted by P | at 9:18 PM | |

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

    Fog of Journalism


    · Angua picks up on some drivel in The Guardian a while back. Yes, The Guardian. Some drivel. But I've noticed that, aside from actual axe-grinding, there's an awful lot of confusion in newspapers and magazines on just about every topic. It's not stupidity or ignorance but more a fiendish desire to simplify everything, and so you end up with a collection of bromides which afford people the opportunity of being pro or anti something without the inconvenience of having to think about it. And then earlier today I discovered that 73 percent of Americans can't find Ireland on a map if it is not clearly labelled so. It's sort of conspicuous, sticking out in the Atlantic and all. Anyway, I would ascribe this to indifference, and this means that newspapers can go on exercising whatever knee-jerk they're comfortable with. Maybe they can't do otherwise, I don't know.


     — posted by P | at 10:33 PM | |

    Words


    · Sometimes people want you to "have a look at" something they've written. Well, sure. There might be a few eyes that need to be crossed, a misplaced coma. That's easily done. But sometimes the thing they give you appears to have been hastily translated from some Central Asian language and needs to be reworked into normal English. Awkward participle constructions, perfectly acceptable in Chuvash, have to be turned into clauses, and so on. That's not too difficult. And now you have a perfectly good text which makes no sense! The problem then becomes fixing other people's mistakes, which is a lot harder than making your own.

    · I saw the expression "by dint of" somewhere. I never thought about it before, so I looked it up in the OED. "Dint" (cognate of Old Norse dyntr) means "blow" and is related to the word "dent". "By blow of arms" came to mean "by power of arms", and from there the modern sense. But curiously enough, there are no cognates in the Teutonic languages. That's odd, because it sounds like the sort of rough thing Teutons would bark at each other. I've been trying to think of some additional etymology so that I could write a stiff letter to those snobs at Oxford pointing out their mistake: "Surely you are aware of the Gothic root ... " No luck yet.

    · Remember: in Basque jakin means "to know"; but "to know [a person]" is ezagutu. People will probably know what you mean, but they might laugh at you. And you don't want that. Similarly, the French word trouble, as a masculine noun, means "row", "confusion", etc., but la trouble (f.) means, of course, "hoop net". An extremely common mistake.

    · If you need some information about Abeditions you can visit their site, but you could also phone them at +32(0)68.28.60.60: "All demand of information can get used to by telephone", they explain.


     — posted by P | at 2:49 PM | |

Friday, October 22, 2004

    La mer


    Oh! si patiente,
    Même quand méchante!
    Un souffle ami nous chante:
    "Vous sans espérance,
    Mourez sans souffrance!"

    — Verlaine, "La mer est plus belle".

    · Here's a type of human relatively new, I believe, to cataloguers of human types: the jazz critic. These are usually white males of fairly well-heeled background, well-educated, sometimes British, partaking of a certain donnish gravity—in this hardly differing from other species of critic—yet completely obsessed by jazz. They rarely write on any other topic, such as movies or fiction, and don't seem to have sparetime enthusiasms or vices. This last thing is remarkable in a writer. Yet the idea of a drunken jazz critic is outlandish, even absurd. I think the explanation might be that the work takes them into bars and clubs, where professional dedication is a bulwark against temptation.

    Music Factoid: In 1938, musicians in Artie Shaw's band earned ten dollars a night, according to John Chilton's Billie's blues (London: Quartet Books, 1975, p. 53.). That would be about $134.68 in today's money.


     — posted by P | at 6:23 PM | |

Thursday, October 21, 2004

    I'm Asking You to Look into Your Heart And Shut Up


    · Paul Krugman, alluded to by Maxspeak, mentions something interesting:

    Last week, the Republican National Committee sent an angry, threatening letter to Rock the Vote, an organization that has been using the draft issue to mobilize young voters. "This urban myth regarding a draft has been thoroughly debunked," the letter declared, and quoted Mr. Bush: "We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer Army is working."
    Never mind the issue, look at that idiotic use of the words "urban myth". Why not just "rumour", "falsehood" or something? Presumably they thought it punchier and hipper.

    Today's Graph


    Some idea of the popularity of famous jazz standards

    · I was looking through someone's vast collection of LPs and noted that some standards are more popular than others, so naturally I made a few calculations on the back of an envelope. The graph at right shows my results.

    The collection I examined contained works by various artists, both vocalists and instrumental ensembles, from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. The majority were US labels and, it seems, original releases. I estimate that some two thirds were by musicians who had been around since the old days.

    As for my choice of songs, I concluded that the logical procedure would be to select any song that happened to pop into my head for absolutely no reason.

    The interesting thing about my graph is that it shows what musicians have chosen to play, not what the dopey public thinks about anything.

    Easy Listening Factoid: "A Swingin' Safari", the theme music for The Match Game, was composed by Bert Kaempfert, who also wrote "Strangers in the Night".

    Book-of-the-Month Club?


    · What kind of person needs a whole month to read a book? Who invented this twelve-step programme for semiliterates? Probably the sort of people who publish books. They're like embittered chefs who've come to despise cooking. "Let's just take Pollo alla limone off the menu, it's too much trouble and nobody orders it—they're too stupid. Let them eat spicy chicken wings."

    Is anyone in the publishing industry of this country aware of the expression "a good wine needs no bush"? Here's some typical stuff from the back of a recent book of twaddle by some Canadian has-been (judge of the obscurity): "...canonized by critics and studied by students worldwide .... widely available as a bestseller ... ". If nothing else, wouldn't somebody trying to purvey fine writing pause over that "studied by students"?

    What seems to have happened is that literature has been taught, over the last 50 years, as if a work of art resembled a walnut. The reader has to crack it open, pick out the bits of meaning, and put them in his head. The rest is discarded. This has had the undesirable effect of promoting meaningful books with important messages.

    I think it works the other way around: books rely on the reader's already having something inside him (probably something he got from reading books).


     — posted by P | at 2:44 PM | |

Friday, October 15, 2004

    Music , etc.


    · Some interesting information about Fartein Valen (1887-1952). At the same site you can find "Aviation in British Music".

    · The Indefatigable Mr Steyn is at it again, saying bad things about John Kerry:

    But he won’t win. Because enough Americans understand that going back to where we were means a return to polite fictions and dangerous illusions. You can’t put that world back together.
    I guess that's a reference to the Dick Cheney remark of a while ago about going back to the "pre-9/11 mindset". If you think about it, the idea makes no sense. It seems to be designed to argue "stick with Bush; he's on the ball with this terrorism thing; he's brought his A-game; the other guy is a weakling".

    I can't honestly see any reason to worry that US citizens are going to forget about the 9/11 attacks. Everybody knew that terrorists could mount some outrage somewhere in the US. There was the earlier World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing. The 9/11 attacks eclipsed these and shocked everyone around the world. But who was spouting "polite fictions" back then? And what is the nature of these "polite fictions"? Is that some kind of coded message or something?

    Here are VP Cheney's remarks:

    It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war.
    Lots of lefties have criticized this as fear-mongering, as if Mr Cheney meant to say: vote for Kerry and we'll be attacked. That's not what he meant, though, but what he meant is completely stupid. If we get attacked again, his words imply, we'll go soft on terrorism and consider it a mere crime rather than an act of war. I think that's a justifiable interpretation of what he said. And it makes no sense: another 9/11 will make us forget about the first one. How stupid is that?

    So poor Mr Steyn is reduced to the Jonah Goldberg variations. He ought to write more about musical theatre and that. Something he knows about.


     — posted by P | at 3:54 PM | |

    Ve Heff Vays of ...


    · Maybe I fell asleep in the early 21st century and now here it is the mid 1400s or so. According to Obsidian Wings, torture might be okay... What I don't see, though, in the comments of various postings on this, is the point that if torture is wicked, then surely getting someone else to do it is even worse. Yet the zanies seem to have reasoned in just the opposite way: we can do this terrible thing and avoid the responsability. I say if you want to torture people, do it yourself.

    Djangology


    · Django Reinhardt was once asked what his favourite piece of music was. He mentioned Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, Bach's Toccata and fugue, but "... maybe Debussy comes closer to my musical ideal, for in him I find the sensibility and intelligence that I look for in any kind of music." From Jazz guitars: an anthology, edited by James Sallis. New York: Quill, 1984, p. 128.

    Seven Habits of Highly-Paid People Who Do not Appear to Be Doing Anything



    • Go to other departments on unknown business
    • Go to bathroom
    • Have 40-minute conversations right behind my desk
    • Leave desk; return; re-depart
    • Make a point of quizzing everyone you meet about some work-related arcana
    • Discuss, at great length, problems which are only problems for those who have nothing to do but think about the work that other people ought to be doing.
    • Meeting, meetings, meetings!

    Speaking of Beef Extract Plants


    · (They mean a factory, not, disappointing to relate, a meaty botanical wonder.) Some memoirs of corned beef, from the comments at Chase me, Ladies. Oh—the other stuff is kind of interesting too. About Che Guevara's baldness.

    Waiting for This to Happen


    · An important story (via Orcinus, who also links to another source and still another) about civil rights and so on. The FBI wanted to know who checked out a book on Bin Laden from some library in the Whatcom County Library System in Washington. The library refused to tell them. The author of the story notes in conclusion:

    The FBI still has the bin Laden book.
    Librarians point out, it's overdue.
    One thing to note: libraries probably can't afford to keep transaction records longer than necessary. It's an awful lot of useless data. Once a book is safely returned, nobody needs to know where it has been. You might want to know how often a book has circulated but anything else is useless. Just a matter of economy. I believe the circulation modules of some new library systems work that way.

    This also suggests that either there aren't any real leads on possible US-based terrorists or there aren't any US-based terrorists.


     — posted by P | at 2:53 PM | |

Thursday, October 14, 2004

    Dumb Mental Health Gag


    · The other night I heard a man on TV use the combination "OCD" to mean "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" (on some crime show where they use a lot of Q-tips) Well ... okay. How could an Obsessive Compulsion be Disorderly? And anyway, in most professions—butcher, baker, banker, grocer—you do need to be somewhat compulsive. Supposing you're a brain surgeon. Wouldn't some measure of obsessive compulsion be a good thing?


     — posted by P | at 3:34 PM | |

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

    · Some interesting reminiscences of Aleksei Batashev, president of the Moscow Jazz Club during Benny Goodman's Soviet tour in 1962.

    A bit more, in Russian, at Dzhazz Rossii.

    · I've been looking for information about the underground movie theatre discovered underneath Paris a while ago. In ArtsJournal (scroll down a bit):

    Urban Guerilla Artists Claim Ownership Of Underground Paris Cinema A clandestine group of "urban explorers" calling themselves La Mexicaine de la Perforation and which claims its mission is to "reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art" has claimed ownership of a cinema located in a cave under Paris. The place was discovered by puzzled police last week. "They (the police) freaked out completely. They called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives. They got it on to national TV news. They hadn't a clue."
    This was reported in the Guardian but all their links seem to have lost their integrity. Here's a link from "Filmrot.com". What does the name mean? I assume it's a pun on Machine de perforation, a machine for drilling through rock.

    Cool it, Daddy-O


    · I haven't seen it yet, but The Rebel Set (1959), directed by Gene Fowler Jr., looks promising.

    Edward Platt (the Chief in Get Smart) organizes some beatniks to steal a lot of money. Then he doublecrosses them! In the 1950's and 60's Platt was in scores of films and appeared in almost every TV show of the period. He played juvenile offender officer "Ray Fremick" in Rebel without a Cause and many other roles.


     — posted by P | at 3:43 PM | |

Sunday, October 10, 2004

    Presidential Poetry


    · I think people don't appreciate the poetry of President Bush quite enough. That's probably because as long as he's in office everyone looks only to his performance qua president and disregards any other, irrelevant, thing.

    Here then is a particularly fine piece from his recent work:

    Tribal Sovereignty

    Tribal sovereignty means that
    it's sovereign
    You're a
    You're a
    (you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign)
    Entity

    (Washington DC, 2004)


     — posted by P | at 2:09 PM | |

    Big Bad Jazz


    · Actually, the title of Albert McCarthy's jumbo book about jazz is Big Band Jazz (London: Peerage Books, 1983), and I misread it as above. I think I'm right in saying my version is better, if less specific.

    If you'll now turn to page 16 of Ole Brask's Jazz people (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976) you will find James Jones wanted to write a book about Django Reinhardt and spent a good few years in Paris doing research. His concluding impression after all this was that nobody really knew Reinhardt, or could explain the man, and therefore he had to abandon the project; but he does relate an interesting anecdote: Duke Ellington had Reinhardt over for a US tour. There was to be a concert at Carnegie Hall but Django didn't show. He was found wandering around Sixth Avenue inspecting secondhand stores.


     — posted by P | at 12:07 PM | |

    Let's Monitor the Internet


    · As usual, terrorists might be using the internet bla bla bla:

    "While many netizens are leery of any restrictions on the freedom that flourishes on the internet and have a libertarian approach regarding any threats to this freedom, it is incumbent on us to accept some responsible oversight."
    Etc. Terrorists use the internet, therefore, etc. Notice the language: "libertarian approach regarding any threats to this freedom", which being interpreted means: not wanting to be spied on. More?
    Furthermore the Senate should ratify the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber Crime which contains methods that would prevent terrorists from hijacking the internet.
    Yes, they might seize it at gunpoint and drive off. This was at American Craphead, sorry, "Thinker".


     — posted by P | at 10:38 AM | |

    From the Desk of Jane Galt


    · Attention!

    The verdict: gosh, I'm too tired to guess. But expectations were so low for Bush, that I almost think not drooling on himself was a win.
    Hurray! Gosh! I guess we can score this as a win for the Bushmeister! Gawrsh. (This from someone who was instructing us on the iniquity of Canadian softwood lumber, i.e.., pine and spruce that almost every building has, and explaining that it was just bad.)


     — posted by P | at 7:28 AM | |

Friday, October 08, 2004

    The Trick Is to Not Mind That It Hurts




    Pain Incidents by Intensity

    · A few days ago I somehow blew a rib out of place by excessive coughing and sneezing. I don't think it's very serious. Nothing seems to be broken. It's a bit like a twisted ankle, except it's in my ribcage and causes extraordinary discomfort every time I move.

    I can still do all the normal things, but I can't cough, sneeze, sit up, sit down, lie down, get up, reach down, or laugh without wincing in pain. I can manage a restrained laugh, but I hate to think of the calamity if I were to sneeze.

    However, things have improved over the last few days. So much so that I 've decided to institute a series of important and totally convincing bar graphs showing my good progress and recovery.

    Since I was sidelined by this thing, I decided to make the best use of my time: watch the elevator in my building to see if the old elevator paradox holds true. As everyone knows, elevators don't act as one would expect. They keep ascending and descending in a somewhat stochastic process, whereas you'd think that everyone leaves and enters the building at the ground floor, rather that flying in and out of the windows above. My conclusion: There's something funny going on in my building, because people are always using the elevator just when I want to.


     — posted by P | at 1:50 PM | |

Thursday, October 07, 2004

    Fantasia para un Gentilhombre


    · I used to know a repulsive kid at high school who, if he thought somebody looked Oriental, would ask if he knew any martial arts. No matter what the answer was, he would go on talking about kung fu, jiu-jitsu, etc. For some people the Far East means nothing but martial arts. For others it's just food, or exotic young women. The same thing with people who tell you they like music: sometimes they really mean that they spend all their time stoned and listening to records.

    Kill Bill vol. 2 reminds me of that. No story to speak of—oh, sorry, the vengeance thing, an archetypical thingamabob. I think the trick is to make it interesting. Otherwise all you've got is a kid's story with lots of gore and snarling people. It's a billion dollar comic book. The same old gags: somebody kills somebody and then says, "I'm sorry, how rude of me", etc. Then Uma Thurman, who, I gather, can't read aloud very well. Then a lot of speeches which aren't as good as the ones in Pulp Fiction.

    It was a good idea having the Kung Fu guy's evil twin in it.


     — posted by P | at 5:15 PM | |

    I Suffer from Voice Immodulation. As Do Hundreds of Others


    · Bob Harris in This Modern World, comments on a serious matter, the numbness in the media over news of civilian deaths in Iraq. He has a lot to say about this, none of it very cheerful:

    The military isn't pressed and can't be bothered for a detailed explanation about the incident, other than to blame the victims themselves. "Great care should be taken by all to avoid and keep a safe distance from any active military operation as unpredictable events can occur," the U.S. spokesman says.

    "Unpredictable events," they say. Like an earthquake or a lightning strike. Like an unprovoked attack from an Apache helicopter, firing on unarmed civilians, on tape, recorded for all the world to see.

    Nobody's responsible. These are "unpredictable events."

    In passing he notes something that I've always thought terrifically bizarre: Wolf Blitzer's aprosodia. You can't tell if he's asking a question or if the end of the story is near. "BLA BLA BLA! AND I'M WOLF BLITZER!

    This is the same condition from which Will Farrel suffers when he's playing "Jacob Silj". But Blitzer gives the impression that he doesn't know what he's talking about and, moreover, doesn't know that he doesn't know, or thinks that only an idler would waste time trying to understand something. At first I thought it odd that such a person would get to be a well-known journalist. But maybe that's the very reason why he's done well: the goal now might be just to get on the air, shout a lot, then on to the next thing. Quick! Before the other channels start shouting about it.

    I imagine at the end of the day he just drops into a fitful doze, wondering what all the shouting was about.


     — posted by P | at 2:43 PM | |

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

    The Great Debate


    This is Your Brain on Drugs

    · I did manage to watch 30 seconds of the Cheney-Edwards match, but then I decided to watch a few episodes of Spongebob Squarepants instead. Afterwards it struck me how similar Edwards is to Spongebob and, in turn, how much Cheney resembles Squidward, but as if they were both on medication. Edwards, I would say, some mild thing like valium, or perhaps a muscle relaxant; Cheney I'm not sure about. Clomipramine, benzodiazepine, chlorpromazine, one of those.


     — posted by P | at 7:51 PM | |

    Truth, Truth ...


    · Apparently there is a group to counter the Swift Boat Cranks: Truth & Trust. I hadn't heard of them until I looked in at Letter from Gotham. It seems to clear the air a bit. (Frankly I think the site itself would be better if the design were more straightforward. When it comes up there's a sort of fade-in effect as all the movies and cinemaoids kick in. That's just me, of course. I get alarmed when something I'm reading starts squirming around and threatening to download all manner of special features and trailers. But there is lots of stuff there.)


     — posted by P | at 7:23 PM | |

    Islamic Beers


    The Brewery at Rawalpindi, ca. 1941

    · People have probably been wondering what the chief Islamic beer is; they may have missed this one.It was founded at Murree by the British in 1861, but the company can't sell its product to most of the population.Therefore they have been seeking an export market, particularly the UK. Write to your local dealer. Or better yet, next time you're in a restaurant, make sure the following exchange occurs:
    "Anything to drink with that?"
    "Oh, let me have a Murree, please."
    "What? Murray?"
    "No, Murree Beer; it's from Rawalpindi. You know."
    "I'm afraid we don't have that."
    "No? Oh. That's kind of odd, don't you think?"


     — posted by P | at 3:49 PM | |

    65 Pfennigs


    · My uncle once told me that there was a shop in their neighbourhood in Berlin where bread cost 65 Pfennigs, and so the family referred to it as "65 Pfennigs". Nobody else would know that, though. His point was that a small, obscure, thing can mean something specific to somebody. I think this could be an intelligence-gathering question. It's not enough to know the language because there are hefty bags of other things you need to know to understand a thing, and in this sense some intel types seem to underestimate the value of that. I've done some interpretation work, and I often felt like saying, "He says ... , but what he means is ...", etc. People just frown impatiently at that, as if to say, "Oh, shut up." So I don't know.


     — posted by P | at 2:56 PM | |

    A Partial List of Musical Reinhardts


    • Babik Reinhardt
    • Coco Reinhardt
    • Django Reinhardt
    • Jospeh Reinhardt
    • Lulu Reinhardt
    • Mandino Reinhardt
    • Mike Reinhardt
    • Noé Reinhardt
    • Nono Reinhardt
    • Samon Reinhardt
    • Sascha Reinhardt
    • Schnuckenack Reinhardt
    • Sony Reinhardt
    • Vino Reinhardt
    • Zipflo Reinhardt


     — posted by P | at 2:17 PM | |

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

    Tais-Toi et Sois Jeune


    · I think it's kind of interesting to know what a nation's young men think about a particular war, current or imminent, and, via Pandagon, I found a bit of an indication at Zogby International:

    The survey reveals that 60 percent disagree with the statement that George W. Bush made the right decision to go war with Iraq. (Only 40 percent think Bush made the correct decision.) These attitudes remain firmly held when other aspects of the war are probed. For example, 63 percent disagree with the claim that Bush made the right decision to go to war, even if the intelligence data were flawed.
    I somehow flunked any course in arithmetic but those do seem like bad odds, and I'd say fold. If the Bush administration really wants to win, it will have to come up with something big, or else hit Kerry below the waterline.

    Of course, many of those diffident men may not vote, or may vote against their personal feelings, but doesn't this mean: people are in favour of Bush's policies unless they have an idea of how much they will cost?


     — posted by P | at 4:15 PM | |

    Debate Threats


    · CNN has this to report:

    WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned authorities in Florida that Thursday's presidential debate at the University of Miami could be an attractive target for terrorists.... "We do not have any specific information or intelligence to suggest that this first presidential debate is a target," a DHS official said, adding that there was no specific threat information against any of the debates.
    To clarify: the debates could be target, but we don't know; moreover, we don't know. Still, it's good to release this vital information.

    Whenever I get bored and restless, I phone 911 and say, "There could be an emergency. I have no specifics though." And I'm almost always right. The next day it turns out there was an emergency somewhere.

    As for the debates themselves, how interesting could they be? After all the conditions, provisos, stipulations, easements, etc., it'll be like watching a duel with bows and arrows at three thousand yards.


     — posted by P | at 2:18 PM | |

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

    · Apparently this book by Michele Malkin encouraging the internment of the foreign-born and their children and their grand-children and great-grand-children is taken seriously by some. Well, okay. To be expected. But the cover of the work seems to have photos of Mohamed Atta, the terrorist, and some Japanese man side by side. The Japanese man is one Richard Kotoshirodo, a probable spy, as I learn from Is That Legal. And from there you can see that Kotoshirodo was not charged with anything; yet Malkin (or her publisher) equates the two. So—I'm confused. Internment of foreigners during WWII was probably justified (although we've no reason to believe so), therefore let's do it again (although there's no reason to do so). By this same token Joseph Farah and Ralph Nader should pack a bag.


     — posted by P | at 7:16 PM | |

    · Amazing the things you only notice by accident. This weblog, Best of Both Worlds, is rich in content. Two authors, different takes, etc. That seems to be the best thing for a weblog, the two-man team. One or the other can do the work for a spell, yet there aren't multiple viewpoints in play. Anyway, there's this interesting entry: from Best of Both Worlds:

    Where does Karl Rove get the idea that there's an analogy between Northern Ireland and Dubya's War on Terror? A few weeks ago, we had the spectacle of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble professing mystification about this question, even though, the answer is essentially: because, David, you told him. Perhaps the peddlers of the analogy had to lie low for a little while after that embarrassment, but Mark Steyn can't be held back any longer. He's at it again in today's Sunday Telegraph, house organ of the old world branch of the VRC.
    And there's lots more there about Mark Steyn who, I think, has jumped a shoal of sharks in the last while.


     — posted by P | at 5:10 PM | |

Thursday, September 16, 2004

    · Here's something on a blog written by some bright young Harvard student, on the problem of getting "young" people to vote:

    Since old people vote in such large numbers, politicians have turned more and more to discussing “senior” issues - prescription drug benefits, Medicare, the pressure of retiring baby boomers. Taxes and jobs aren’t terribly compelling for college students either.
    (Italics mine). So I guess Edwards was right: there really are two Americas. But people don't like to be told that.


     — posted by P | at 3:07 PM | |

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

    · Just about every top story on CNN these last two weeks is awfully dull. These trials, for example—it's not as if they were great mysteries consuming the nation. When they're over they might merit a short note. But that's it. I should think as crimes they're not even unusual. You can't imagine the writers at Law & Order basing a story on one of them, can you?

    And then the Olympics. There's nothing wrong with news media covering the Olympics as a way of beguiling the time, but it seems as if there is more Olympic coverage than there are actual Olympics going on. Every time somebody jumps through a hoop, there's a host of people recording it and talking about it. The motto ought to be "Costlier, noisier, longer". I suppose this says something about the ecology of news. More and more people end up paying attention to fewer and fewer things. In the future there will be just one thing every month that everyone gets to think about, and there won't really be any local news at all, since everyone will be too busy mulling over the month's topic to go out and do anything. That might not be such a bad thing. Dull, though.


     — posted by P | at 4:24 PM | |

Thursday, July 29, 2004

    · Au cinéma: Killing Zoe. It's either an improbable French Type A love story, or a heist, or drug-taking in Paris. I think these things all work against each other. Maybe I misunderstood something, but the love story concerns Julie Delpy, a part-time prostitute who falls for our hero (Eric Stoltz). After they spend a single evening together, his friend comes along and brutally throws her out of the room because they have to plan the big heist, and our hero does nothing to stop it. That's endearing, isn't it? And yet we're asked to believe that she remains devoted to him. As for the heist, we don't get to see any of the planning, which is the best part of any canonical heist movie. We need to be shown how difficult it will be, what the gimmick is, and a bit of foreshadowing of the thing that will go disastrously wrong. I want to go along and case the joint too, but there's no time for that: it's the night before the heist, so in preparation our friends drink lots, smoke hash, and then go out to the clubs to ingest every other drug known to man.

    Oh yes. The mastermind is a heroin user. I think if I were a technical criminal Who Knows His Stuff, as our hero is supposed to be, I would back out of any project run by a junkie. But that's just me.

    During the course of the movie I took time off to catch up on Spongebob Squarepants, so I may have missed something. I wasn't quite clear what they intended to steal, and was dismayed to find that it was a dollyload of gold ingots! Hard to say how many. I would estimate three or four hundred, a good stack. How much would that weigh? As much as a small car? A bit more? And they would have to carry all that out, load it, speed off with it. And then what? Is it possible to fence that much gold right after a huge gold heist?

    That's another interesting question: what's the best thing to do if you happen to stumble across an aluminium suitcase full of mob money? That's dealt with a bit in A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, and Billy-Bob Thornton.



     — posted by P | at 10:11 AM | |

    · I discovered the other day that the mouse on this computer was having a harder and harder time travelling up and down. I was racing it up and down like kid with a toy truck, only to have the pointer make a fitful vertical jump of an inch or two, or else zip along from side to side. Finally I took matters into my own incompetent hands. I discovered small amounts of finely-woven cat hair stuck to the various moving parts. Cat hair in the mouse. Hmm. It took me a good half hour to remove it as I don't have any computer-fixing tools (and probably shouldn't be allowed any). So apparently the cat takes it into her head, when I'm not around, to lounge about on the computer table and mousepad.


     — posted by P | at 9:26 AM | |

    · Fafblog just keeps getting better and better. (I have corrected the address in the sidebar). It's interesting to read various bloggers who are attending the Democrats' convention. Sounds like a big deal. It's hard to tell from the TV screen though. Unless you've been attempered to the idea of watching speech after speech, and then watching people try to come up with some commentary, it's a bit dry. I imagine the real stories are going on in hallways and quiet spots around the floor, people shaking hands and exchanging a few words. At least, that's my experience of conferences: nobody listens to the papers, but everyone's hobnobbing. It like people who attend church mainly for the fellowship and refreshments.



     — posted by P | at 8:59 AM | |

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

    · I ran into an old Spring Garden character on the weekend. He told me he had just turned 60. But he has a bit of that old Halifax accent: he calls me "Pwaauwl" and substitutes short "i" for "e": "I rimimbir whin" etc. There's a bit more to it than that, though. He reminded me of the "Doric Restaurant". which I had thought was on the first block after South Park Street, but he correctly told me it was on the next block, where there is now a second-string urban mall. The site it used to occupy is now an art deco French restaurant called "Art Deco", with no customers. I wonder whose dumb idea that was? The food is pretty good, but it's not anything you couldn't make at home. But what people really want is another Greek family restaurant that serves rice pudding with their cheap specials ("It comes with") and also hands out the odd free coffee and snack to the indigent.



     — posted by P | at 12:26 AM | |

Thursday, July 15, 2004

    ·Here's a note that used to appear on Columbia LPs in the 1950s:

    Music by the hour

    "Lp", Columbia's registered trademark, denoting the Long-Playing, 33 1/3 rpm system, was first introduced in 1948. The invention of the "Lp" has contributed immeasurably to the realization of High-Fidelity sound, to the ease of playing and storing records and, even to the form music itself is assuming, for with up to thirty minutes or more of uninterrupted music on a single side of a modern Long Playing record, the performer, as well as the listener, has inherited new freedom and new musical dimensions.

    Enjoy recorded music more on Long Playing records. And look for the symbol "Lp" on the record jacket--the exclusive trademark of Columbia, originator of the Long Playing record!

    Isn't that strangely awkward? Why is it awkward? "...even to the form music..." All the commas and asides, and finally the alien adspeak exhortation at the end: "Enjoy music more". Since this text was intended to appear on thousands of slipcases, why did they not polish it up a bit? But maybe there's something interesting here. The wandering syntax shows it to have been composed by a committee, rather than an individual, while the unnecessary talking points reveal the committee's mandate. And then late at night the boss probably had the big idea of adding the word "immeasurably", and no one felt like objecting. "Gee, that's great, J.B. 'Immeasurably' sort of naturally goes right after 'contributed'."


     — posted by P | at 3:04 PM | |

Thursday, July 08, 2004

    · Tom Ridge promises another big attack by al-Qa'ida, according to CNN.cm. I do hope it won't be as bad as the previous monthly alerts. I haven't read the story because I am stupidly going about my business, but I imagine there has been some "chatter". To be serious, though, what's the point of these alerts? What can US citizens do any differently? Be more vigilant? Would that help, given that there are full-time professionals doing that very thing? This isn't crimestoppers they're talking about, but some kind of big disastrous attack. In the movies, whenever the country is threatened by asteroids or alien invasion, the government usually takes the line that it's best not to tell their citizens, to avoid panic and chaos. Sometimes the hero of the movie chastizes the government for this. But here we see Ridge taking the other route: publicize this vague threat against, which there seems to be no remedy, in the hope that people will do--what? Pray? Put their houses in order? Contemplate their final end? Well, no doubt I'm missing something. But then I'm not paying attention.


     — posted by P | at 3:16 PM | |

Sunday, July 04, 2004

    · If you've enjoyed the work of Bruce Campbell, then you're sure to like Bubba Ho-tep, a remarkable achievement in the world of strange movies. Campbell plays an aging Elvis, and he has "major bug problems" and has to use a walker. Also his best friend is John F. Kennedy, brilliantly disguised as a black man. There is a Bubba Ho-tep site to look at. And here are some reviews. But it's about the best Elvis I've seen -- natural, restrained. By all accounts Elvis was a very polite, thoughtful man.


     — posted by P | at 10:45 AM | |

Saturday, July 03, 2004

    · It seems Marlon Brando has died. My mother, who died in April, was his biggest fan -- oh, let's be honest, she positively adored the man. She liked manly neurotics, and that's why she married my father. But it does seem as if a whole generation is passing away. The whole period of James Dean, Elvis, Streetcar, Ed Sullivan. It's all gone. Well, now I'm watching Bubba Ho-tep, a sort of alternate Elvis story.


     — posted by P | at 8:23 AM | |

    · I think not enough is known about Roch Carrier, this country's chief librarian.

    He is the author of "Le Chandail de Hockey", about a rotten kid who gets the wrong hockey sweater, which causes wackiness to ensue, and a short novel, La Guerre, Yes Sir!, in which wackiness breaks out among the life-affirming Québec villagers during World War II, hugely droll. But he also had a hand in the famous Canadian kids' movie, Le Martien de Noël, about a Martian (played by Marcel Sabourin) who visits a Québec village at Christmas. Imagine that, a Martian!! He floats around and leaves green footprints and giggles like a pederast. Will the wackiness not stop? Anyway, that's our chief librarian. He is highly thought of.


     — posted by P | at 7:33 AM | |

Friday, July 02, 2004

    · "The Editors" at "The Poor Man" quote a news source that says: top officials "exaggerated what the available intelligence said about Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs and left out important caveats." That's good, isn't it? "Left out important caveats", maybe it could be "failed to not lie their heads off".

    · Much to think about this week. Apparently Canada had an election, with the usual results. Probably another election soon. What the Conservatives ought to do, if they would win next time, is actually have real conservative policies and at least pretend to be aware that places like Québec and the Atlantic Provinces exist somewhere out there.

    · There were lots of ants in my house the other day, so I'll have to shop around for a can of cholinesterase inhibitors. One thing about ants: they're dumb. They run around in circles, aimless, clueless. "What am I doing? Oh yeah. What am I -- Oh yeah", etc. Then one will come out of the hole and meet another coming in. They lock antennae and apparently the first one has said to the second, "No; go back", which he does, for about three seconds. Then it's back to running around in circles.

    · Paul Krugman, in The New York Times (some registration required), describes Michael Moore: "Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job." I thought the movie quite powerful for a boring old documentary. People in the theatre where I was applauded at the end, something I've never seen before.


     — posted by P | at 2:41 PM | |

Thursday, July 01, 2004

    Whom Do You Like among Tyrants?


    · I can remember all kinds of big leaders warmly kissing and fondling L. Brezhnev and others. So how did this relatively small fry, Saddam Hussein, get to be a bugbear? I think he just blew people off. He's the Fredo of the big family, sitting in a *flat in some lake with his executioner. He went too far, invited the wrong people, gabbed about stuff, made the wrong deals. Or perhaps I'm wrong and he's the Antichrist. (The problem with that is Hussein's stubborn refusal to meddle in Christian countries by supporting gay marriage or drugs or other Un-American activities. The guy was just way too lazy.)
    *Somebody asked me: a "flat" is a tiny flat-bottom boat for getting around to do maintenance on normal boats.


     — posted by P | at 1:52 AM | |

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

    Bibliography


    · The Emigrant's Guide to New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, Lower Canada, Upper Canada and New Brunswick. London: W. Pearson, 1832. You're probably wondering what the average daily wage was in, say, Upper Canada at that time. It was between three and six shillings; a mechanic could expect to earn five shillings or more. What's that worth? The pamphlet itself, all of 32 pages long, cost one shilling right there.

    · "No stranger to success himself, Lawence Welk is the man who introduced the Lennon Sisters to the musical public, and has remained their warm admirer ever since. With his steady hand rhythmically waving the baton, his toes tapping out that distinctive bouncy beat, the affable maestro from the Midwest provides perfect backing to the lyrical Lennons." The Lennon Sisters with Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra (Vocalion VL 73887).

    Fafblog!!


    Remember that 9/11, after all, changed everything - even elementary rules of logic - and we cannot pursue the real threats of today before we've finished eliminating the more deadly potentially-shadowy threats of tomorrow.
    For more of the same achingly beautiful analysis go to fafblog! and meet Fafnir, Giblets and the Medium Lobster.

    Other


    · In an article entitled Government Attacks on Area Specialists Called Disservice to U.S. Middle East Policy (from the UCLA International Institute, via Juan Cole), Rashid Khalidi writes: "The administration is plagued by the stifling environment of groupthink, especially in the office of the Secretary of Defense. I know many officials in the military and the State Department who cannot express themselves freely in their official capacities for fear of retribution." "Groupthink" is a good term. It's a phenomenon you see gumming up things everywhere.

    · Over the weekend I saw Vanilla Sky again. It stands up well to a second viewing. I had forgotten how much detail it contains and how well Tom Cruise plays the role. This time, however, I saw it on DVD in the comfortable squalor of my own one-room country shack, so instead of having to leap up at the end and trample on other moviegoers in a race for the exit, I was able to look at the credits. I hadn't known that it was adapted from Abre los ojos, by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil and starring Eduardo Noriega, who appeared in a previous movie by Gil called Nadie conoce a nadie. This latter is about a man who works as a crossword puzzle composer for a Seville newspaper. Naturally, he gets a mysterious demand to use the word "adversario" in the puzzle for Holy Week, and all heck breaks loose, etc. The title alone, Nadie conoce a nadie, is interesting. The film is loosely based on a novel of the same title by Juan Bonilla, who has written some other books with equally intriguing titles: El arte del yo-yo (1996), La compañía de los solitarios (1999), Cansados de estar muertos (1998), La noche del Skylab (2000). Bonilla has translated selections from Houseman, as well as Poe's "The Raven", into Spanish. One of his stories ("El Terrorista Passivo") concerns a terrorist who decides on this vocation after seeing Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. He notes that one of the extras is wearing a wristwatch. What's the connection? Well, the narrator cites a lot of stuff about things causing each other, but in his case it is all self-contained. I don't know what that means.

    · Unqualified Offerings start their dismayed response to another Volokh opinion rather modestly:

    "It's not like Eugene Volokh thinks much of me, either, but I've always considered his specialty to be showy moral handwringing on the way to siding with Power anyway."
    They have a good long paragraph with lots of links, at least one of which demands its own link here. (I wonder if in the future there will be a standard legal text called Medium Lobster on Evidence, or something like that.) I can't see the point of bragging about all the laws you have if you only intend to live by them when it's convenient. I might as well say, "I shall never rob banks -- unless I really need some money, of course." My parents, who were not great legal minds, would have made short work of that argument.

    · So many bloggers are self-styled libertarians, of all different septs. What some people mean when they talk about libertarianism seems to derive from some old Austrian economist or, more importantly, the novels of Ayn Rand! And probably the mid-period works of Norman Rockwell! Or Edgar Guest! "It takes a heap o' livin' / To make a house a home". Anything wrong with that?

    But if you're serious about libertarianism and all its implications, then here's a recent story from The Halifax Herald, about a man who lived a long and healthy life in an uninsulated cabin in the woods, subsisting on berries, deer, and eels. Most people used to live that way, but just about no one can now. Once all kinds of modern state-sponsored help are introduced, people become accustomed to it, and they begin to live accordingly. To discontinue it would be extremely cruel, unless everybody had a generation or so to relearn all the old ways. And in reality, even that's not possible. No one's that tough or that smart now. You'd have people dying all over the place from bad food, disease, infections, exposure. That's obviously not what libertarians want, but it's one of the things you would want to think about before you embraced their ideas wholeheartedly.


     — posted by P | at 2:09 PM | |

Saturday, June 26, 2004

    · Max Sawicky assigns this topic for 25 June: "The sovereign nation of Iraq will not be sovereign, a nation, or Iraq."

    · Apparently Michael Moore might not be allowed to publicize his new film after July 30 because of the US McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. Here is a story with more about that. I don't think that's the purpose of the law, to stop ads for books and films that happen to be about current politicians. I think they meantƒoh, what would I know? But does it mean Moore could use ads that did not contain images of or references to President Bush? Actually, that could be interesting: everyone knows what the movie is about, but the ad would have irrelevant stuff in it, with the line: "We'd like to tell you about this movie. But that's illegal". Or Moore could pay for the ads himself, as a private citizen. I'm sure he could afford that. And at the end of the spot he could come on and say, "I'm Michael Moore, and I approve this ad. Damn, I had to pay for it myself!" There, that's two good ideas for Michael Moore.

    · In local news, the bigshots are at it again: some e-businesschurls have been manipulating the stock price of their huge enterprise "Knowledge House". The Halifax Chronical-Herald has published some e-mails (you'd think if their business was computers, they would try not to send each other incriminating messages, but that's how these people are): "Ray and I would really like to get the stock to $5.45 and try to solicit more support from the group going forward.", etc. Well, that's just normal. What annoys me is this stupid phrase "going forward" that every total jackass seems to use now. And what a dumb name for a company. "Knowledge House". I would put them in jail just for that.

    · "Collounsbury", apparently an experienced, Arabic-speaking businessman working in the Middle East, has some extensive commentary on the problems of the CPA in Iraq. He seems to be suggesting that they don't know what they're doing and haven't the people to deal with the task. I was watching "The Fog of War" the other night; McNamara was saying the much same thing about Vietnam (among other, equally interesting things).

    · An idea for a short silent film: A guy is sitting in some guy's office, apparently a newly-hired employee chatting with the boss. They smile, shake hands, and then the boss's deputy comes in to show him around. Next we see the two of them viewing the whole office, various departments, the deputy gesturing with one arm and explaining. In like manner they view meeting rooms, a loading dock, parking lot, access ramp, lunatic asylum, cage full of raging beasts, mortuary, disco, crack house, and so on. The usual things. Finally we see them on a stage (our POV is upstage; they're at the footlights). The deputy gestures to the audience, who applaud. Fin. That might be fun.

    · Pierre DesRuisseaux has published a new book, Personne du plus grand nombre. A nice line: "Des stéroides abolisants de ma bouche."


     — posted by P | at 12:52 AM | |

Thursday, May 20, 2004

    · I don't think I would put Guys and Dolls anwhere near ther top of my list of movies. Yeah, Angua likes it. But—in the category of truly good American musicals surely The Music Man beats it hollow. Brando as Sky Masterson stank and the whole irony of having gamblers talk in that stilted fashion sort of died in its bed soon after its author did.
    Now, I'm being unfair, but recollect The Music Man for an instant. A slice of Americana, isn't it? In the way "G&D" won't be. Based on a period of Booth Tarkington! Yes, and those patter songs:

    You got trouble, my friend, right here,I say, trouble right here in River City.
    Why sure I'm a billiard player,
    Certainly mighty proud I say
    I'm always mighty proud to say it.
    I consider that the hours I spend
    With a cue in my hand are golden.
    Help you cultivate horse sense
    And a cool head and a keen eye.
    Never take and try to give
    An iron-clad leave to yourself
    From a three-rail billiard shot?
    But just as I say,
    It takes judgement, brains, and maturity to score
    In a balkline game,
    I say that any boob can take
    And shove a ball in a pocket.

    And they call that sloth.
    The first big step on the road
    To the depths of deg-ra-Day--
    I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon,
    Then beer from a bottle.
    And the next thing you know,
    Your son is playin' for money
    In a pinch-back suit.
    And list'nin to some big out-a-town Jasper
    Hearin' him tell about horse-race gamblin'.
    Not a wholesome trottin' race, no!
    But a race where they set down right on the horse!
    Like to see some stuck-up jockey'boy
    Sittin' on Dan Patch? Make your blood boil?
    Well, I should say.
    Friends, lemme tell you what I mean.

    Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table.
    Pockets that mark the difference
    Between a gentlemen and a bum,
    With a capital "B,"
    And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!
    And all week long your River City
    Youth'll be frittern away,
    I say your young men'll be frittern!
    Frittern away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too!
    Get the ball in the pocket,
    Never mind gittin' Dandelions pulled
    Or the screen door patched or the beefsteak pounded.
    Never mind pumpin' any water
    'Til your parents are caught with the Cistern empty
    On a Saturday night and that's trouble,
    Oh, yes we got lots and lots a' trouble.
    I'm thinkin' of the kids in the knickerbockers,
    Shirt-tail young ones, peekin' in the pool
    Hall window after school, look, folks!
    Right here in River City.
    Trouble with a capital "T"
    And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!

    Now, I know all you folks are the right kinda parents. I'm gonna be perfectly frank.
    Would you like to know what kinda conversation goes
    On while they're loafin' around that Hall?
    They're tryin' out Bevo, tryin' out cubebs,
    Tryin' out Tailor Mades like Cigarette Feends!
    And braggin' all about
    How they're gonna cover up a tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen.
    One fine night, they leave the pool hall,
    Headin' for the dance at the Arm'ry!
    Libertine men and Scarlet women!
    And Rag-time, shameless music
    That'll grab your son and your daughter
    With the arms of a jungle animal instinct!
    Mass-staria!
    Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground!

    I think it's poetry anyway.


     — posted by P | at 12:00 AM | |

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

    I am a Bank Statement


    I am a bank statement run wild
    With figures and signs
    and devil-may-care additions
    of no and certain terms

    I am amorphous
    Embrace me
    If you can
    (Probably not, I guess)

    My columns are weird
    and include acronyms you have never seen,
    nor were meant do decode

    My bottom line
    Is on a page you have lost.


     — posted by P | at 1:34 PM | |

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Friday, May 14, 2004

Friday, May 07, 2004

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Saturday, May 01, 2004

    Blood and Homages, pt. 4


    · Kill Bill, vol. 1. It's not bad, if you're an admirer of Japanese swordplay. It has its merits. In fact, it's just the sort of movie to give your sister, if your sister is a loud, boozy, depraved teen.

    The dialogue is a bit stilted: "Before satisfaction could be mine," etc., but I assume that's comic book talk Also, it's dismaying that the only aspects of Japanese culture that people seem able to embrace is manga and martial arts rubbish. Also, Tarantino's record collection appears to be tapped out, as we get nothing but "My Baby Shot me Down" and some awfully dull Japanese girl band. I'm sure there are lots of better Japanese girl bands out there.

    Then there's some stuff about Yakuza ... Zzzzzz ... what? Oh yes. I don't think Yakuza employs ninja turtles to enforce their deals with politicians and businessmen. I think they're much more business-like than that. They're probably big on kanban, or at least have read all the books on it.

    It's unfair to complain of any lack of plausibility in a would-be manga movie such as this, but Godard's Bande à part (from which Tarantino takes his company's name) turned over a few narrative devices in order to free movies from the unreality of movies. I suspect Tarantino has taken the idea the other way, to make drama into a passive computer game. You get to watch Uma Thurman fighting with people but you can't do much about her. It's as good as watching somebody else play a game.

    What rating? Well, if you like really good, dismal, senseless violence, it's good. Half a thumb way up. But a lot of viewers will find it an insult to the intelligence.

    I found it a bit like watching some boys putting a firecracker in a toad's mouth. I recommend Tarantino get off the coke and set his sights a bit higher.


     — posted by P | at 7:51 AM | |

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Friday, April 23, 2004

    Something Everyone's Doing


    · Yes, a poll. You can go to this "blogpoll" place and design a poll.


    Of course it only works if people visit your blog. Otherwise it will look pathetic and foolish.

    I just suggested those blogs because they are well known. I would hate to seem to be implying that any of them is annoying.


     — posted by P | at 3:25 PM | |

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Sunday, April 11, 2004

    Raed in the Middle


    · Another interesting blog from Iraq; Raed in the Middle. "Lost between the East and the West" is his subtitle. His installment for April 10 is an open letter to the Japanese about the hostages. It's a sad business all around. Juan Cole tells of sporadic fighting just about everywhere in Iraq.

    On a more cheerful note, Paul Martin's blog remains cheerfully not updated since October of last year. Either the guy is too busy waffling about something or, darn it, not that much has been happening in his life. Or maybe a lot has been going on and he just can't talk about it right now.


     — posted by P | at 8:33 AM | |

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

    May He Rest in Cleanliness


    · I saw an ad for toilets this morning. I was watching CNN, and up comes an ad for American Standard. In it a man with a plunger ... well, I don't want to go into it. But the music they use is Mozart's "Requiem". The man in the ad is happy, jubilating and falling to his knees in slow motion because his toilet works okay. I presume the authors of this bit of total sewage know that a requiem is not, as they portray it, a triumphant, joyful thing, but—no, they don't know anything of the kind, and don't want to know, and don't care.

    They thought nobody else could posssibly be insulted, because Middle America won't know Mozart from shinola.

    Joking aside, I've rarely been so dismayed by an ad. And is western art just a source for cool stuff to use while selling toilet paper and diarrhea medicine and things like that? When they're trying to sell cars and houses it's always pop music, but classical music now heralds something about hygiene and the problems thereof. It's a bad move. I just wish these people had the sense not to use requiem music for a toilet ad.

    It probably won't matter, because people will still buy the product, and I'm not calling for a boycott of American Standard. I just want them to agee that Mozart's "Requiem" is not a good-toilet ditty. But they won't. Businessmen are so dumb they'll steal art to sell their wares.


     — posted by P | at 11:40 AM | |

Thursday, April 01, 2004

    A Presy


    · Whenever I watched old movies or read old novels I would wonder what they meant by sums of money. Is that expensive? Cheap? Good deal? I wouldn't know. What would that be in our money? For example, in High Sierra(1941) Bogart pays for a tank of gas with five dollars and gets something like $3.60 in change. In The Big Heat (1953) Glenn Ford buys a beer for (I think) 35 cents.

    But now, thanks to Max B. Sawicky we have this toye. You could go through old newspapers and look at ads, for example, assuming you work in a library, and just amaze yourself about prices then and now. It's quite instructive.


     — posted by P | at 3:32 PM | |

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Saturday, March 27, 2004

    It's Madison Time


    · Well, not yet. But I urge you to see this movie, if you can: Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part, sometimes called Outsiders. It seems a trifle naive to us now, but there are parts that certainly can stand comparison with anything coming out, particularly the scene in which our heroes get up in a café and perform "The Madison". If this is not the coolest scene in movie history, then ní lá fós é (to continue our Irish theme).

    The interesting thing is that at that period Hitchcock was looking at French novels (Vertigo is based on a book called D'entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) while French directors were looking at American novels (Bande is based on Fool's Gold by Dolores Hitchens).


     — posted by P | at 1:48 PM | |

    A Shropshire Lad


    · Over at my parents' house, I was told that "these old books are just in the way". I reshelved a few of them, but I noted that two had belonged to my father: At Swim-Two-Birds, which I gave him, and A Shropshire Lad, which he must have bought in his happy hedonist youth. As for the first book, it is a remarkable description of a Dublin student's life and the complexity of existence. It even has three separate openings. The second opening, for example:

    There was nothing unusual in the appearance of Mr John Furriskey but actually he had one distinction that is rarely encountered—he was born at the age of twenty-five and entered the world with a memory but without the personal experience to account for it.
    There's something interesting about that. A memory but no personal experience, isn't that the way sometimes? The story is interspersed with chunks of Irish epic stuff:

    At the butt-end of a year's wandering in the company of each other, the madman of Briton had a message for Sweeny's ear.

    It is true that we must part today, he said, for the end of my life has come and I must go to where I am to die.

    What class of a death will you die? asked Sweeny.

    Not difficult to relate, said the other, I go now to Eas Dubhthaigh and a gust of wind will get under me until it slams me into the waterfall for drowning, and I shall be interred in the churchyard of a saint, and afterwards I shall attain Heaven. That is my end.

    (Sweeny is of course Mad Sweeny, and you have to know that in the Old Irish epics people would often preface their answer to a question by saying, "ni ansa", "not difficult", or "easy to relate"). There is some more fun like this and about the writer whose characters start writing about him while he's asleep and so on, but it's a rather sombre book if you read carefully. It also has three endings, in a way: "... cut his jugular with a razor three times and scrawled with a dying hand on a picture of his wife good-bye, good-bye, good-bye."

    Anyway, my father read the book and decided it was okay, but he didn't care for what he called the "Joycean bits".

    Now for Housman. Of course there was a lot of argument about how good a poet he was. I think it's sometimes inappropriate for us mortals to complain about poets who, after all, are trying to do something that I couldn't even begin to do. I wouldn't know where to start. I cannot write anything resembling a poem. So Hands Off A.E. Housman! Here's "XXII":

    The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
    And out we troop to see:
    A single redcoat turns his head,
    He turns and looks at me.

    My man, from sky to sky's so far,
    We never crossed before;
    Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
    We're like to meet no more;

    What thoughts at heart have you and I
    We cannot stop to tell;
    But dead or living, drunk or dry,
    Soldier, I wish you well.
    You'll notice some internal rhyme and other trickery: st, s, so, tr, tr. And what it means to me? When I was a boy in the late 60's I was waiting for my uncle or somebody at the Kansas City train station, and my mother said: "Look. Green Berets." Sure enough, there were two soldiers waiting for a train, and they looked very grim, not shooting craps and joking about as you see in the movies. I thought: maybe they're off to Vietnam. So I hope they're okay.


     — posted by P | at 7:32 AM | |

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Bibliography

  Old Books
... without the dust

 

 

· Ors, Eugenio d', 1882-1954. Oceanografia del tedio; Historias de las esparragueras. Madrid: Calpe, 1921.

Eugenio d'Ors was born in Barcelona in 1881, studied law and philosophy, became an art critic and essayist, and gradually developed his own peculiar ideas, exemplified in this delightful, short work, which he wrote in Spanish (rather than Catalan) around 1919. The Spanish Civil War caught him in Paris, where he remained for the duration. Though not an activist, he would have been unwelcome at home because of his Catalan sympathies.

The author, or a character referred to throughout as "Autor", opens his story by explaining that his doctor had instructed him, for the sake of his health, to do absolutely nothing. He's not even alowed to think about anything. "Ni un movimiento, ni un pensamiento!", the doctor says. He therefore spends all his time in a lawn chair looking at clouds, wondering about scents that waft past, in short, doing nothing. And yet everything, in a way. It's a wonderful story about inaction, just the sort of thing for someone who spends a lot of time looking at weblogs.

· Tabori, Paul. The Natural Science of Stupidity. Philadelphia: Chilton Co., 1959.

The author, who was born in 1908, discusses stupidity. He explains how the Yap people of the Pilau Islands use stone disks, some of them the size of millstones, as currency. The largest stones are more like real estate: you could buy one, and your wealth would be ensured. Then he goes on about King Solomon's mines, which he connects with this passage in Kings I, 9.

He has a lot to say about popular beliefs, crazes, and things. It's a shame he wrote long before conspiracy theories really came into their own.

   
  
  Georges Duhamel
Select Bibliography

 

 

Duhamel, Georges, Le desert de Bièvres. Paris: Mercure de France, 1930.

—, Biographie de mes fantômes, 1901-1906. Paris: P. Hartmann, 1944.

—, Chroniques des Pasquier. Paris: Mercure de France, 1933-

—, Essai sur le roman. Paris: M. Lesage, 1925.

—, Fables de mon jardin, suivi de Mon royaume. Paris: Mercure de France, 1961.

—, Israël, clef de l'Orient. Paris: Mercure de France, 1957.

—, Les plaisirs et les jeux, mémoires du cuib et du tioup. Paris: Mercure de France, 1946.

—, Récits des temps de guerre. Paris: Mercure de France, 1949.

—, Souvenirs de la vie du paradis. Paris: Mercure de France, 1906.

   
  

Annals of Public Neurosis

  Peace Tricks
April 2002

 

 

"The month-long standoff at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound looked to be nearing its conclusion as U.S. and British security experts arrived in the region to implement a U.S.-brokered plan."
—CNN, April 29, 2002.

The current talks between the U.S. and everyone else seem to be even more impenetrable than usual, probably because it's difficult to imagine what they might possibly have to talk about. Surely they have exhausted every topic, scoured every useless path many times over, checked and re-checked even the most unpromising approaches? In which case these talks most closely resemble a kind of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, enacted in the curious privacy of public life. We've no idea what they're saying, or what they really want, but we get daily, even hourly reports of this activity of theirs. We don't get the details, or even the gist, of what was discussed, but we are assured that some talking is going on, and that there will be more talking later.

Patients who show signs of obsessive-compulsive behaviour typically find themselves incapable of getting important things done—or even of confronting their most pressing problems. They therefore busy themselves with something they can do effectively, often to the exclusion of all else. Tidying up the bus shelter, making absolutely sure they take x number of steps before opening the front door, and so on. Obviously, the significance of the activities performed can vary: some things are a fairly useful by-product of otherwise misdirected energies; others are of rather doubtful value, at least to the secular world. So it is with political discussions and "U.S.-brokered" peace plans. Some do produce unusual fruit, though not always the expected one, while others have a more magical quality, as if the participants were involved in some sort of Hermetic, alchemical work designed to bring about peace by causing it to be acted out in a symbolic drama.

   
  

Almost a Complete Thought

 

 

 

· Watching a movie. Wait! Is the guy screwing up my correct view of things? Or was my view untenable to begin with? Certainly he can point to his successful career as proof of some rectitude. But maybe he's so clever, so cunning, that he succeeds in the teeth of madness. A prosaic blend of fantasy and reality!

· I was watching some crime show. The crime has already been committed. Snazzy men and women arrive at the crime scene and take swabs, wear rubber gloves, pose in their outfits. Wait, is this a fashion show? Meanwhile ... let's look at this corpse really closely. Dear me. Ugh, can we stop looking at that for a bit? It's a pretty horrible crime. And so messy!

"Look, Lt. I've been examining some filth and discovered who the 'perp' is."

"Good. Let us now set our jaws grimly."

· I read somewhere that when you are watching TV, your brain is less active than when you are asleep. I find this bizarre, because I often dream that I'm watching TV.

· Most movies are much better with the sound off, so you can make up your own, more entertaining dialogue. Also, it starts to get intriguing. You end up wondering what's going to happen next, because all sorts of inexplicable things keep happening.

   
  

Stories

  A Story
Subtitle

 

 

It's too bad. If I could think of a story offhand, I would write it in this space; that's what you would be reading. Instead, there is only this inconsequential, self-regarding excuse for not being able to come up with anything.

Of course, I think the reader is doing very well so far. Remarkably well. I thing the reader comes out of this whole thing smelling like a rose. He has done his job. No, the reader is above reproach. His record is unblemished. Some readers even go that extra step and look for coded messages in the few paragraphs made available to them. That shows resourcefulness, valour — I think.

   
  
  Reveille
A Miniature Fascist Dictator

 

 

There was a miniature Fascist dictator in the departure lounge of the airport, Ted noticed. About four feet high, eighty pounds, sallow complexion, neatly trimmed black moustache, wearing a khaki uniform of some kind.

Was he planning a small Putsch? A Measure? What pint-sized dreams of conquest did he have? "Our National party is stronger - we are in no way diminished," he may have imagined himself saying. "Now, if I say to you that our Party's goal is nothing less than to revendicate that which we have lost, that which is historically our due; to reclaim our patrimony ..." Is that what was going on in his head? Was he on his way somewhere, or coming from somewhere? Going into exile, or returning from it? Escaping? Seeking?

Ted decided to follow him until he could come up with some further course of action. But the man wasn't really doing anything. Just wandering around with a container of coffee, keeping an eye on the brown satchel and shopping bags he had left on one of the naugahyde-and-aluminium benches. He paused in front of the windows that looked onto the airfield. His nostrils flared at the sight of massed passenger aircraft. Then he sauntered over to the other side of the lounge and studied some posters. Ted pretended to inspect a model lobster trap in a display case nearby.

They toured the lounge in stages and, even before the small man glanced back at him, Ted was already lost in thought beneath an departure-and-arrivals screen. "Am I supposed to do something?" he wondered. "Is there some history going on here, somewhere?" But how would one know?

Ted then discreetly followed him back to the coffee bar. Apparently he wanted another coffee. There were several customers before them, and in the time it took for them to be served, Ted was almost able to identify the small man's scent: Lancôme for Men? His choice of coffee, too, was unusual, a decaffeinated Ethiopian flavour. He went back to his original bench. Ted loitered just behind him, undecided. Unprepared. Shall I say something? What's he doing?

Looking at his ticket again.

Sipping his coffee, sucking a great deal of air between pursed lips just over the steaming surface of the coffee. Too hot.

Consulting the contents of his satchel once again, just to verify that he had everything he would need for his trip. Ted, peering over his shoulder, caught sight of a volume of Pablo Neruda, Jane Eyre, and a stuffed toy rabbit.

Putting his coffee down, digging with both hands in one of the shopping bags, the one that had some sort of environmentalist logo on it. Nous recyclons!

Recovering a pair of sunglasses. Putting them on! Expensive ones!

"Excuse me - okay if I sit down?"

"Eh? Oh, please. Yes, yes - you are quite welcome."

Ted sat down wearily. "I've been travelling all day, I hope you don't mind."

The other nodded rapidly. "It is very tiresome, all this travelling," he said. "I myself have been up since very early, making connecting flights. And still my day is not over."

Ted seized the thing roundly. "What sort of business are you in, if it's no harm to ask?"

"I am a consultant. Specialising in pharmaceutical trade." The little dictator removed his sunglasses and began to polish them on his handkerchief.

Well, at least he wasn't a jack-booted thug!

"I am not used to talking to fewer than five thousand people at a time", he continued, "for fear of being misunderstood. However, I shall make a beginning.

"It is horrifying to think of the consequences of chance. One man begins a great career as an officer in the European Theatre; another, no less gifted, has his head blown off as soon as he steps out of the landing craft. Why does that happen? Who is to blame? Who will account for it?"

Here the little man swigged his coffee. Ted noted that his hair, seemingly dark brown, was really an artificial boot-brown colour. Ted formed a reply: "Well, I suppose it would depend how you look - "

But the other man was not to be denied: "It is no accident that the corporate hegemony of a small group of - "

Ted sprang into action. More on that next week.

   
  
  Fun at Home
A Pious Memory

 

 

When Chris heard God had invited Himself to the party, he thought it was all over. There was probably no getting around it, though. "What they do on tv", said Bill, "is invite a Catholic priest, a Rabbi, and a minister as well. To sort of get their collective spin on it."

"But this isn't a tv show", said Chris, "it's a party. A little get-together for a bunch of friends, some of whom are leaving in a couple weeks. And anyway, that approach always comes off as a tired, unfunny joke, predictable, you know...I don't know why everyone acts as if tv meant something."

"Yeah. I had this dream I was watching tv last night. But then I realised dreams are kind of like tv, only not as good. We'd better go to the liquor store."

"Just let me get my coat."

God phoned around 8:00 to say He would be along soon. "Want me to bring anything?" he asked.

"Just yourself, man," said Chris. People always brought too much junk. There was always a surplus of snack-food bags and dip the next day.

"Okay", said God. "After all, I am That Am, you know."

People started turning up a little later:

"Sheila!" said Chris, greeting one of his guests, "So you managed to find the address."

"Yeah - sorry I'm late, but - "

"No problem. So, are you excited about your new job?"

"Yes, it's - "

"Dirk!" said Chris, greeting another guest, "Glad you could make it, are you excited about the new job?"

"Well - it's kind of not what I'm looking for, but it's in the right area. And I didn't want to have to move to - "

"And your girlfriend? Is she ...?"

"In Norway." And he began to look as if he would like to scowl, but instead turned to the consuming business of installing some cans of beer in the fridge. Other people skulked around the kitchen. A party had erupted.

A little later Chris noticed God levelling a tequila shot and saying, "I'm gonna have a wicked case of the guilts tomorrow."

God put cucumber slices over his eyes and said, "Look at Me. I am become weird."

Around 2:00 am God hooked up His guitar and started playing "Stairway to Heaven" really loud. Most of the people who had fallen asleep woke up and staggered back to the party. He played pretty well. Then He segued into "Born to be Wild", which He played rather better. The sheer noise was an audial colossus, making the dishes tremble even in the kitchen.

"Get Him out of here, the man's an animal," said Bill.

Chris looked at God from the door into the kitchen. "Oh, I don't know. I don't think he's going to do anything too serious."

"No, I mean the noise. The neighbours'll be like - "

"Any problem?" asked God. He was coming to get some more wine. Since He was no longer playing the guitar there didn't seem to by any need to admonish Him.

A little later something happened. But was that before or after the police dropped by? And later still, God was found lying in the driveway. They carried Him into a bedroom.

Is He ok?

Did He hurt himself?

In the morning they opened the bedroom door to find He had gone.

"Now what do we do?" asked Chris.

   
  
  At the —
History of Painting

 

 

I am confronted with a roomful of wild canvases, one every three feet or so. I should like to be able to make something of them, of each one, I am eager to look and see. I so want this to be a happy occasion, matching the success of my haircut, clean shirt, and the perfectly-lit, high- ceilinged gallery in which I find myself. The first work is a smear of toothpaste on a background of tar. Okay, I'll come back to it. The next one is a painting of a doll with severe injuries. I would rather not look at that for too long. Next: a smear of something on an untreated canvas. This is interesting. What is that stuff? Has it been melted on? Next: a big smear on a big canvas. It is faintly s-shaped, like a meandering river of industrial waste through an indifferent wilderness. I suspect that polysaccharides have contributed to the very exciting texture. But once again we are confronted with the work.

A man behind me starts explaining the historical phonology of Tibetan, making it all a bit clearer by citing some examples from Proto-Tibeto-Burman, and a few moments later I am smoking a cigarette outside somewhere.

   
  
  Fifty Toyes
A Story for Children

 

 

Before B. retired to his room for the rest of his life, people kept coming up to him and complaining, "I've run out of ideas. I don't know what to think about any more," and he would reply, "How can I help? Why would you think I could help? I haven't had a thought in years. I have stared into space, chatted with people I supposedly know, watched tv, read weekly news magazines. I've watched grown men play with each other as a form of entertainment. I haven't really had to think. Moreover, I am retiring now because of a general lack of benevolence. Also, I can't find my umbrella, which makes my going out a non-starter, kind of. I may set fire to a bundle of words and pour a can of emotions over them later, so - drop in whenever. I would enjoy the company. You know." All this to forestall the observation that he was, himself, lazy and indifferent, or was merely hiding from something. Of course he had books and a tv, so what harm could there be in not going anywhere? However, reasonable people can no longer hope to get very far by argumentation that appeals to reason, since they are probably arguing with unreasonable people, as statistics can be made to show. And as he thought this, it occurred to him: compiling statistics was one of the innumerable things he could do now, in the freedom of his room.
   
  
  Anne of Green Gables
A Part of Our Heritage

 

 

Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Green Gables. Anne of Green Gables. Do people never tire of that? Anne of Green Gables. Based on the novel Anne of Green Gables. I assume there was such a person, once: Anne of Green Gables. I sort of wondered about her after I had heard the name for, oh, the ten thousandth time. I read somewhere that "Anne of Green Gables is a trademark and a Canadian official mark of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc." So you see? If you were thinking of calling your novel Anne of Green Gables, don't. You understand why that would be wrong, don't you? People would accuse you of trying to "cash in", so to speak, and that would tend to cast a mercenary shadow over the spirit of Anne of Green Gables. The argument of the novel Anne of Green Gables is as follows: some people want to adopt a boy who can help out on the farm; they are disappointed when they get a girl instead. This girl is Anne Shirley, later to be known as Anne of Green Gables and, later still, as a trademark and a Canadian official mark of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc. She has red hair and freckles, she is irrepressible, and she proves to be just as good as any boy, in fact much, much better. This bodes well for the whole community. That's the whole plot. Probably quicker to identify it by its children's literature motif number.

The book could have been called Anne of Green Gables Makes Her Bones, but that makes for rather a long title. It could have been more interesting, though: Anne would be the village drunk, stealing other women's menfolk, dealing drugs, and coming home in the morning to threaten her foster parents with the .22 and demand money. Eventually she gets an important job in the government through some people she used to party with. But this is not what happens in Anne of Green Gables. Nowhere do you hear of her being an alcoholic, or having her neglected children taken into charge, or her endless squabbles with social services, or her many appearances in court accompanied by a different leering car thief each time. None of that appears in the novel Anne of Green Gables, or in any of the other canonical Anne books. Why is that?
   
  
 · Here you'll find rather more irrelevant mini essays, roughly categorized somehow. I wish I could be more clear.
· Bibliographical Notes
— Old Books
— Duhamel Bibliography
· Annals of Public Neurosis
— Peace Tricks
· Almost a Complete Thought
· Stories
— Reveille
— Fun at Home
— A Story
— At the —
— A Story for Children
— Anne of Green Gables
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