You could link to just about any Onion News Network item and laugh, but I almost peed myself watching this one:
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
(It’s pretty loud, so turn the volume down before playing it.)
Wednesday 0-fer
You may not have realized it, dear reader, but I’ve actually been adhering to a somewhat regular schedule with some of this blog’s features. Monday is What It Is day, Tuesday’s are for Lost in the Supermarket, Wednesday is 0-fer day, and Friday brings us Unrequired Reading! (Since Friends went off the air, Thursdays have been a bleak time for me.) (Just kidding; I’ve never actually seen a full episode of Friends, but that doesn’t mean it qualifies as an 0-fer.)
Maybe I’ll put up a sidebar that breaks out the schedule and shows the most recent post in each series. Considering how long it took me to go through my blogroll and pare away sites I’m no longer interested in (while adding a bazillion sites I’ve lately discovered), I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.
Anyway, I went downstairs to my library yesterday to figure out who this week’s 0-fer should be. There are plenty of candidates, as I’ve bought far too many books over the course of my life by far too many authors whom I’ll never get around to even sampling. Still, there’s no fun in bringing up an 0-fer whom no one has ever heard of (“Why, you’ve never read J.A. Macgillivray?!”), so I combed the shelves until I came up with . . .
Yup! I’ve never read a word of his stuff: not Sons & Lovers, nor Lady Chatterley’s Lover, nor Women in Love, nor any other of the Love-related titles. Possibly for that reason.
A pal of mine from grad school has offered to read some Lawrence with me in a remote book club, but I’ve hemmed and hawed about that, since I’d feel too much pressure to
- read the book
- have something smart to say about it
Even though that’s, like, what I do.
Dam fine morning
There’ll probably be a long-ass, rambling, depressing post later today, but for the moment, enjoy the view:
Just wondering
Do kids nowadays sit “Indian style” or is there another term for it?
Lost in the Supermarket: Highway Repairs
The Book of, uh, something and something else
I was too darn busy this weekend to write about that final Montaigne essay, and this week’s going to be pretty rough at the office, but I don’t want to leave you guys in the literary lurch. So here’s the closing passage from Philip Roth’s 1980 interview with Milan Kundera.
It’s not that I’ve been poring over Kundera lately, or contemplating this interview. Rather, an acquaintance sent out a request for someone to dig this interview up and provide him with the passage for something he’s writing. It initially ran at the end of Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, but Roth included it in his Shop Talk collection of interviews & essays. I typed it up for him, then decided to share it with you:
Roth: Is this [novel], then, the furthest point you have reached in your pessimism?
Kundera: I am wary of the words pessimism and optimism. A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions. I don’t know whether my nation will perish and I don’t know which of my characters is right. I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian novel, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There the novel has no place. In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.
What It Is: 3/23/2009
What I’m reading: Zot! 1987-1991
What I’m listening to: Bill Simmons’ 2-part podcast with Chuck Klosterman.
What I’m watching: Some NCAA hoops, some of our regular TV — 30 Rock, The Soup, Dollhouse, Eastbound & Down — and, um, The House Bunny.
What I’m drinking: Boy, I drank a lot last week at the conference. I managed to go from gin to Guinness to wine over the course of an evening on Monday, but escaped a hangover. I hate to say it’s hard work, but I do get pretty wiped out walking an exhibit hall all day and being in business-mode. It’s kinda sad that the first drink is really a relief, but there it is. I mean, beyond that, I get into this really weird conference-metabolism, where all my habits are thrown off: eating, sleeping, drinking, bathroom, etc. At least I was able to replace my daily walks with Rufus with a 1.4-mile walk each way from my hotel to the Javits Center. Still, I was all sorts of out of rhythm last week.
What Rufus is up to: Getting used to the house routine again after spending a few days with Ruby & Willow (and Jason & Kristy). No dog-park or greyhound hike for him this week; we were too lazy on Saturday and I had to go down to Philadelphia on Sunday.
Where I’m going: Nodarnwhere!
What I’m happy about: One conference over! Three more (plus our own) to go! Also, my wife & I belatedly celebrated our anniversary this weekend with a fantastic dinner at Cafe Matisse.
What I’m sad about: That Continental failed to log both of the flights I booked for April & May conferences. I rebooked ’em at a net savings of $30, but they’ve never messed up any of my ticketing before this.
What I’m pondering: Whether the addition of a giant, high-end Whole Foods to Bergen “Dark Underworld” Mall was one of the signs of the apocalypse in the book of Revelations. (Whoops! I mean, “Bergen Town Center.”)
At least they weren’t working with a cement truck
If only they had watched Mythbusters:
First Rule of Fight Club
At first, I thought, “Why would a high school administration keep records of cage fights?”
But then I realized that if you don’t keep records, there’s no way of knowing who’s toughest.