I was just trying to fly to Amsterdam on IcelandAir. You would think that Icelanders would have their shit down. What else do they have to do than be blonde and Nordic, fly the planes, load the luggage, go home to their hearthsides and their expensive liquers and turtlenecks, and coats with fur, or fake fur, collars. They had a good idea, let's give them that: start a discount airline that flies people from the U.S. to Europe, and vice versa, making a stop in their capitol for folks to spend their money. A no-brainer. But, you see, Reykjavik is windy, out there alone on the Atlantic, and sometimes it's too windy for some of those planes full of tourist dollars and euros to land in Iceland. When that happens to a plane flying from, say, Boston, the captain interrupts your Radiohead to say, "Unfortunately, the weather in Iceland has too much heavy winds, and so we will have to divert to Glasgow." Like, oh, that seat has gum on it, I will sit on the next seat. I was on such a plane.
Eleven hours in the Glasgow airport, sitting in an admittedly nice foux leather seat, but with nothing to do but read David Copperfield (yes, I am reading it again, having abandoned it a couple years ago two-thirds through, but it's even better this time) and order super-strong but tiny cappucinos and those little cookies that have an undefinable, but foreign, flavor. But at first, naturally, before the leather seat and coffee, we crowded around the IcelandAir info desk at the Glasgow airport. "We have no information," was the testy reply. But then it seemed they did have information, because it trickled out in the form of rumors. Reykjavik airport is closed, so they can't fly the pilots out to save us, for example. So we in the crowd appealed to the the info desk attendant: "Please just make an announcement, so we know! So we know what to do, how long to wait, and so on." And the attendant said she would make an announcement. And in a few minutes the announcement echoed through the terminal: "Please move away from the IcelandAir information desk."
Arrived Amsterdam around midnight with no place to stay (I was supposed to be picked up by a friend, but I had called him from Glasgow to say go about your life and pray for me, and the train to his city had finished for the night) only to find out they had failed to load the luggage on the plane. Inside my bag were all my nice clothes in which I was supposed to convince real estate agents and finance people that I am respectable and worthy of buying a house (turns out it's amazing how long you can get away with buying a few shirts, socks, and underwear and wearing them with one pear of jeans). Also in the bag was the video camera so I could show Traca the viewings on my return. Every day for five days I was told there was "no information" about my bag. Had it vanished from the earth? Then yesterday, the day before I am to leave, they sent my mobile a text message. "PLEASE CONTACT KLM GROUND SERVICES." KLM is handling the problem for IcelandAir. So I went to the airport and picked up my bag, which was mostly useless to me at that point. So I swapped out my backpack of dirty socks, underwear, and t shirts for clean ones and left the bag in airport storage. My bag spent five days in Glasgow and then never left Schiphol Airport.
I board my return IcelandAir flight in a few hours, prepared to spend eleven hours in Greenland.
To be continued...
11.07.2006
Iowa City Arts: November
Apologies for the tardiness. Hope I didn't miss too much last week raking my leaves. As we slide on the downslope of the fall semester, the events let up a bit but not in terms of quality.
November Lectures
November Lectures
- TODAY (yikes, sorry for the late notice), 11.07, 11 a.m., Frank Conroy Reading Room, Dey House - Francine Prose: "Close Reading--Reading Like a Master"
- Thursday, 11.09, 7:30 p.m., UI Main Lounge, IMU - Frank McCourt: "If You Want to Know Yourself--Teach!"
- Tuesday, 11.28, 11 a.m., FCRR, Dey House - Nicholas Delbanco: "Writing By Imitating the Great Masters" Be sure an catch his fiction reading the night before (scroll down).
- Through Thursday, 11.09, at the Bijou: John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig & the Angry Inch) offers up his next sexual/textual treatise/dram-edy Shortbus. Also playing is the Kirby Dick documentary examining the MPAA's hypocrisy-in-practice This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Trailers and showtimes here.
- Friday, 11.10, through Thursday, 11.16, at the Bijou: Michael Kang's "heartfelt" look at a first-generation Chinese-American adolescent in The Motel and a documentary following a girls' high school basketball team, The Heart of the Game. Trailers and showtimes here.
- Thursday, 11.09, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Tim Miller reads non-fiction.
- Thursday, 11.09, 7:30 p.m., UI Museum of Art - It's a three-for-all: Workshop director and fiction writer Lan Samantha Chang, poet Cole Swenson, and Atlantic-award-winner and non-fictionalist Matt Davis all read as part of the Writer-in-Residence reading.
- Friday, 11.10, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Did you miss Sam Chang the night before? You can catch her at PL with Doug Bauer and Sue Miller. The three will likely read their contributions to the collection Death by Pad Thai: And Other Unforgettable Meals.
- Monday, 11.13, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - S. L. Wisenberg reads from his just-out-in-paperback Holocaust Girls.
- Tuesday, 11.14, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Investigatory journalist Steve Hendricks reads from his book-length examination of the FBI's war against the American Indian Movement, The Unquiet Grave.
- Thursday, 11.16, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Kevin Moffett, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, reads from his collection, Permanent Visitors.
- Monday, 11.27, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Nicholas Delbanco likely reads from his new novel, Spring and Fall.
- Wednesday, 11.29, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Katherine Fischer reads from Dreaming the Mississippi.
- Thursday, 11.30, 7 p.m., Prairie Lights - Ashley Capps reads poetry. Workshop grad Capps is the 2005 winner of the Akron Poetry Prize for Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields. Examples of her work here and here. Love that second one.
11.06.2006
Teaching Opportunity, Earthgoaters and Babies and Other Assorted friends
A friend of mine who teaches at a state university is looking for someone with an MFA and writing-class experience to fill a one-semester lectureship starting in January; full benefits, teach writing classes, pay is 20k (for the four months; the cost of living is low in this place) and it can easily be parlayed into a three-year job at the same school starting next fall. They're looking to fill the position quick-quick (next few days), so if you're interested, get in touch with me and I'll pass along more info as well as the department chair's email address (it's that urgent and direct). Sounds like a good opportunity in a neat region of the country, and it's a nice shot to get good experience for anyone sick of adjuncting for little to no pay. Email me at marlette85 at yahoo dot com.
11.03.2006
The Road
Has anyone read Cormac McCarthy's new novel? I finished it last week. I was pretty excited about it -- a load of glowing reviews talking about how he was getting back to his roots (whatever that means -- The Orchard Keeper, maybe?), and claiming that The Road was his greatest achievement besides Blood Meridian.
I started reading McCarthy in college, on the recommendation of Phil Jackson. This wasn't a personal recommendation -- I'd just read an article in which the Zen Master lauded some strange writer. So I picked up the first book I found at the library, All the Pretty Horses, and it stunned me: western myth, romantic, weird gnostic demons huddling in pools when characters puke, and oh those pure simple horses. Nothing personal, Grendel, but Gus McCrae just don't hold a candle to John Grady Cole. I read The Crossing and loved it, and then Blood Meridian, which still freaks me out. Then Suttree a couple years later, which sealed the deal (Outer Dark, Cities on the Plain, Child of God, and the aforementioned Orchard Keeper didn't much do it for me, at least in comparison). Anyway, McCarthy was for years my favorite living writer.
Then he stopped writing and I discovered Nabokov and I went to Iowa and one day Frank mentioned McCarthy. Frank didn't rail against CM or anything -- he just gleefully mocked him in class once, which was a little strange; but still, I thought, Blood Meridian: American Masterpiece. When that new book came out last year, I didn't read it -- it sounded stupid (a crazy guy running around killing people with a cattle prod?). But The Road intrigued me. Friends said it was great. The reviews were solid. So I picked it up.
Today, at this moment, my view has changed: I think McCarthy is at best a blip in American literature. I'm guessing other people who contribute here have always thought this -- maybe some haven't, though. I'd like to hear from anyone interested. For me, the thing about The Road (no plot spoilers, I promise) is that it's quintessential McCarthy only stripped down, and so the novel reveals the simplicity of his entire ouevre: he thinks Evil is everywhere and Good can fight it but will lose. Kierkegaard it ain't.
To me, The Road is like Blood Meridian but with only a couple 'characters', and now the physical world is itself the Judge (or maybe The Road is like The Crossing . . . or maybe Lester Ballard appears, or maybe we see the crazy killers from Outer Darkness . . . and so the derivations continue). The Road is McCarthy's philosophy -- that's a generous word -- laid out plain, and what it's made me realize is that all his books (save maybe Suttree?) are this same philosophy playing out in absurd circumstances. And also people are really good at rigging things by hand (I bet Cormac McCarthy, if he watched TV, loved MacGuyver.)
I remember another contributor on Earthgoat once being unimpressed by Borges's stories; if memory serves, he thought they were simple philosophies wrapped in fiction; but in my mind, at least Borges is playful. At least he laughs at himself a little. McCarthy is actually serious about himself. He takes his Magneto vs. Professor X vision with the utmost gravity, and now that I feel I can 'see' his project -- and more importantly, it's sad lack of complexity -- even that great book, my long time favorite, Blood Meridian, is little more than a childish indulgence.
I started reading McCarthy in college, on the recommendation of Phil Jackson. This wasn't a personal recommendation -- I'd just read an article in which the Zen Master lauded some strange writer. So I picked up the first book I found at the library, All the Pretty Horses, and it stunned me: western myth, romantic, weird gnostic demons huddling in pools when characters puke, and oh those pure simple horses. Nothing personal, Grendel, but Gus McCrae just don't hold a candle to John Grady Cole. I read The Crossing and loved it, and then Blood Meridian, which still freaks me out. Then Suttree a couple years later, which sealed the deal (Outer Dark, Cities on the Plain, Child of God, and the aforementioned Orchard Keeper didn't much do it for me, at least in comparison). Anyway, McCarthy was for years my favorite living writer.
Then he stopped writing and I discovered Nabokov and I went to Iowa and one day Frank mentioned McCarthy. Frank didn't rail against CM or anything -- he just gleefully mocked him in class once, which was a little strange; but still, I thought, Blood Meridian: American Masterpiece. When that new book came out last year, I didn't read it -- it sounded stupid (a crazy guy running around killing people with a cattle prod?). But The Road intrigued me. Friends said it was great. The reviews were solid. So I picked it up.
Today, at this moment, my view has changed: I think McCarthy is at best a blip in American literature. I'm guessing other people who contribute here have always thought this -- maybe some haven't, though. I'd like to hear from anyone interested. For me, the thing about The Road (no plot spoilers, I promise) is that it's quintessential McCarthy only stripped down, and so the novel reveals the simplicity of his entire ouevre: he thinks Evil is everywhere and Good can fight it but will lose. Kierkegaard it ain't.
To me, The Road is like Blood Meridian but with only a couple 'characters', and now the physical world is itself the Judge (or maybe The Road is like The Crossing . . . or maybe Lester Ballard appears, or maybe we see the crazy killers from Outer Darkness . . . and so the derivations continue). The Road is McCarthy's philosophy -- that's a generous word -- laid out plain, and what it's made me realize is that all his books (save maybe Suttree?) are this same philosophy playing out in absurd circumstances. And also people are really good at rigging things by hand (I bet Cormac McCarthy, if he watched TV, loved MacGuyver.)
I remember another contributor on Earthgoat once being unimpressed by Borges's stories; if memory serves, he thought they were simple philosophies wrapped in fiction; but in my mind, at least Borges is playful. At least he laughs at himself a little. McCarthy is actually serious about himself. He takes his Magneto vs. Professor X vision with the utmost gravity, and now that I feel I can 'see' his project -- and more importantly, it's sad lack of complexity -- even that great book, my long time favorite, Blood Meridian, is little more than a childish indulgence.
11.02.2006
10.31.2006
Even More Erotic Adventures of Allen Ruskin, Headmaster of Educational Aid
Ruskin stood in the doorway of the musty mausoleum. They were in the Royal Cemetery, Ruskin dressed as a horned haerlequin in red spandex that fit a bit too tightly around his ship-captain buttocks and his frontal hornpipe. Standing next to him was his protege, Pip, dressed as a parrot.
The mausoleum was full of new bodies -- all young girls, all laying back in perfect repose as if they were simply asleep, waiting for their Prince Charming to wake them. Little did they know what horrifying love spider had slipped his way into their places of final rest and repose. Ruskin, the dastardly devil and deleterious dragon deigned to debar and debase Death's door to delight in delirium his dark dreams of demon debauchery!
"They all took their lives -- poison mainly," explained Pip, plumping up the plumage of his hat, which was already beginning to wilt in the fetid, damp air. He flinched as a bat flew too close overhead.
Ruskin walked among the corpses, indelicately letting his fingers touch them in ways they never would have allowed in life. "Yes -- the sweet words of that alliterative ass, Corwin Cobbins. His romantic writings have made my rascally wrongings much more difficult. Now they all want talk of love, and kisses, and actual feelings! And this! Look at all these fresh flowers who have been struck down before they wilted. If I didn't know better, I'd say Cobbins was working for the French."
"It is very sad indeed. My Joe used to say --"
Ruskin wasn't done. "Why in the world would the woe of one wastrel's words waste such winsome wafers of womanly wonders! Look at this one! Her beauteous orbs rival the moons of Jupiter! And this one! She has a bottom like a ripe mango -- so juicy, so sweet --"
"I think that's leaking embalming fluid, sir," squeaked Pip.
"Dammit! I wasn't being literal, you literal louse! What on earth is wrong with you? You almost stemmed my appetite!"
"I don't like it here -- we'll get caught -- by the police or, or ..." Pip glanced around in fright.
"Or what?" snapped the excited eliciter of Eros, yanking his tights into a more comfortable position. His jester cap rang in the darkness.
"Ghosts??" squeaked Pip.
Ruskin laughed, "Ha! What kind of age do you think we live in? Ghosts are for old Papists and scared little girls (who may need a good warm cuddling to get back into bed -- ha ha)! I'd expect Bart to say something like that, but not you. Did I not tell you about the helper monkeys?"
"True ..."
"We are well into a new century! And it calls for something even more rapacious than I have ever attempted before!"
"I think you had too many cosmopolitans at the Halloween party, sir."
"Shut up, Pip!" Ruskin's eyes crawled around the room like two furry spiders who were looking to eat something like a fly or a cockroach or a wasp or an ant or maybe a very small duck. "We are like two childish cherubs in a confectioner's castle!"
"What do you mean?" quaked Pip.
"If you are to be my protege, you must get one thing absolutely clear," growled Ruskin.
"What?"
"A day with your pants on is a day wasted -- now, let's see what kind of Resurrectionists we are. I'm feeling something rise from the dead as we speak!"
*** Can Allen, the asinine adulteror, sink any lower? Find out next week!
The mausoleum was full of new bodies -- all young girls, all laying back in perfect repose as if they were simply asleep, waiting for their Prince Charming to wake them. Little did they know what horrifying love spider had slipped his way into their places of final rest and repose. Ruskin, the dastardly devil and deleterious dragon deigned to debar and debase Death's door to delight in delirium his dark dreams of demon debauchery!
"They all took their lives -- poison mainly," explained Pip, plumping up the plumage of his hat, which was already beginning to wilt in the fetid, damp air. He flinched as a bat flew too close overhead.
Ruskin walked among the corpses, indelicately letting his fingers touch them in ways they never would have allowed in life. "Yes -- the sweet words of that alliterative ass, Corwin Cobbins. His romantic writings have made my rascally wrongings much more difficult. Now they all want talk of love, and kisses, and actual feelings! And this! Look at all these fresh flowers who have been struck down before they wilted. If I didn't know better, I'd say Cobbins was working for the French."
"It is very sad indeed. My Joe used to say --"
Ruskin wasn't done. "Why in the world would the woe of one wastrel's words waste such winsome wafers of womanly wonders! Look at this one! Her beauteous orbs rival the moons of Jupiter! And this one! She has a bottom like a ripe mango -- so juicy, so sweet --"
"I think that's leaking embalming fluid, sir," squeaked Pip.
"Dammit! I wasn't being literal, you literal louse! What on earth is wrong with you? You almost stemmed my appetite!"
"I don't like it here -- we'll get caught -- by the police or, or ..." Pip glanced around in fright.
"Or what?" snapped the excited eliciter of Eros, yanking his tights into a more comfortable position. His jester cap rang in the darkness.
"Ghosts??" squeaked Pip.
Ruskin laughed, "Ha! What kind of age do you think we live in? Ghosts are for old Papists and scared little girls (who may need a good warm cuddling to get back into bed -- ha ha)! I'd expect Bart to say something like that, but not you. Did I not tell you about the helper monkeys?"
"True ..."
"We are well into a new century! And it calls for something even more rapacious than I have ever attempted before!"
"I think you had too many cosmopolitans at the Halloween party, sir."
"Shut up, Pip!" Ruskin's eyes crawled around the room like two furry spiders who were looking to eat something like a fly or a cockroach or a wasp or an ant or maybe a very small duck. "We are like two childish cherubs in a confectioner's castle!"
"What do you mean?" quaked Pip.
"If you are to be my protege, you must get one thing absolutely clear," growled Ruskin.
"What?"
"A day with your pants on is a day wasted -- now, let's see what kind of Resurrectionists we are. I'm feeling something rise from the dead as we speak!"
*** Can Allen, the asinine adulteror, sink any lower? Find out next week!
Taking stock
I feel like we are losing the point of this meeting place. I have no idea anymore what people are even working on, who has published where, what people think of various books that are out there, or even why this site still exists. Cristina was on Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, and no one said a word. I only discovered that by accident. Daniel is in the New Yorker this week. That's huge -- or at least it used to be. I'm not going to review that story because I love that man even if he only wrote shopping lists, but damn ... Daniel is in the f-ing New Yorker this week. And you -- yes, you -- YOU have been writing and maybe even publishing something, but we don't know what it is or how hard or wonderful or frustrating it is. (Unless you have a blog.)
Here's what I think the problem is: this blog has lost its newness, its immediacy, its cachet, its vibrancy. It will soon be 2007 -- four years post-IWW for our class. Many of the people here now have their own blogs that are usually much better attended to, that are updated much more often. I think maybe this place has run its course. There is a limit to how many places on the Internets people can get to in a day, a week, a lifetime. There is a limit to how much effort people want to put into propping up a connection, a community, a feeling that is receding into the past. I have spent a fair amount of time in the past two years on this blog, and if I had spent that time on my own fiction, maybe my novel would be done. Okay, probably not, but I did it because it's exciting to stay in touch with people who populated one of the favorite times in my life. It's exciting to still feel connected to a group of smart people who write. I don't regret a minute of it. But maybe we have all moved on from this need and are looking forward now into our lives. Maybe the workshop buzz has finally worn off.
I feel like this blog is just hanging out there, usually beyond even my range of attention, a pointless anachronism getting dustier in scattered link lists. I believe I would feel cleaner in my daily life were I to just end it and move on, putting what little time energy I still lend it back into my own writing. The Sword of Damocles trembles above!
Here's what I think the problem is: this blog has lost its newness, its immediacy, its cachet, its vibrancy. It will soon be 2007 -- four years post-IWW for our class. Many of the people here now have their own blogs that are usually much better attended to, that are updated much more often. I think maybe this place has run its course. There is a limit to how many places on the Internets people can get to in a day, a week, a lifetime. There is a limit to how much effort people want to put into propping up a connection, a community, a feeling that is receding into the past. I have spent a fair amount of time in the past two years on this blog, and if I had spent that time on my own fiction, maybe my novel would be done. Okay, probably not, but I did it because it's exciting to stay in touch with people who populated one of the favorite times in my life. It's exciting to still feel connected to a group of smart people who write. I don't regret a minute of it. But maybe we have all moved on from this need and are looking forward now into our lives. Maybe the workshop buzz has finally worn off.
I feel like this blog is just hanging out there, usually beyond even my range of attention, a pointless anachronism getting dustier in scattered link lists. I believe I would feel cleaner in my daily life were I to just end it and move on, putting what little time energy I still lend it back into my own writing. The Sword of Damocles trembles above!
10.24.2006
A decade of birthdays with Traca de Broon
Today this impossibly cute little cherub has officially outlived Jesus, a worthy effort meriting a bit of a retrospective for Traca de Broon (the Irish version her real name, for the curious). It has been my privilege and good fortune to have spent ten of these birthdays with the love of my life, so let's take a stroll down a winding little street called Memory Lane...
1996 - 24 years old
I had known her just six months. We had become friends working together as editors at a certain Bay Area book-publishing company. I got myself assigned as her mentor, and our first lesson took place at a nearby Thai restaurant over lunch. Soon the package of editing materials was casually laid aside as we turned our earnest attention to taking care of the Singhas that somehow kept coming and ended up precipitating a certain tardy, blurry return to our desks. On her birthday, we attended a party at our friend Sat's, who had introduced us, and on the ride back to San Francisco from San Mateo, we occupied the back seat. Don't recall how I managed that, but between us panted my black chow mix, and in the course of our innocent petting of the creature my right hand and her left came into contact, a happenstance akin to when chocolate met peanut butter. A chain reaction of heat and electricity erupted in me. Sweat literally popped off my forehead. Immediately I was cranking down the window seeking relief, to little avail, from the passing highway air. The chain reaction was terminal, though, and soon spread into the rest of our lives, culminating in my decision that I had no desire to go through life without her, leading to my departure from my previous living arrangement and my appearance at her apartment August 17th 1997 with a paper bag of meager belongings and my scooter helmet. She had an orange Karmann Ghia, two cats, and one fork, which she had stolen from the lunch room at work. The object of her grandest larceny, of course, was my heart!
1997 - 25 years old
Cohabitating in her humble studio apartment two blocks from the Upper Haight, we had been invited to dinner with friends at a swank and trendy French restaurant in the Financial district at a time when we had, literally, about a hundred dollars between us. The place was called Plouf, which she later said was the sound of a bag of money being thrown into a river. Afterward, we went to a bar with some of those friends and, I am sorry to say, I stupidly got very high and allowed my insecurities and demons to run rampant for a few hours. This was the birthday of hers that I ruined with an emotional outburst of a pathetic and obnoxious nature, and the fact that she forgave me has since served as a reminder of how just lucky I am.
1998 - 26 years old
T was training for her first marathon, which meant she was being healthy, eating right, not drinking, not smoking. Oh, how I hated the New Way! Again, my selfishness is astonishing and shameful in retrospect, but at least I don't deny it anymore. We spent the birthday evening at her sister's house a few neighborhoods away, a mild event featuring wine and cake and the presentation of her present, which had been split between Tamara, their father, and myself: a hammered dulcimer (T was, and I soon became, a huge Dead Can Dance fan, and if you know the band, the dulcimer will make perfect sense). It wasn't long before I was a lucky and frequent listener, and the song her teacher drilled into her was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and the apartment was, I believe I mentioned, a small studio with two cats.
1999 - 27 years old
We had moved some months before from San Francisco to Galway, Ireland, because why not, and because T had family on her mother's side all over that charming little island and had spent a lot of time there growing up. For her birthday we arranged to meet Ralph and Vanessa, friends who lived in Plymouth but who were travelling in Europe, in Barcelona. (Yes, chastened, flawed I knew I had some making up to do...) Of course we strutted the Ramblas, looking every bit as hot as any of those curvaceous, classy, couture Catalonians, or at least she did, looked as hot, that is, and we ended up on a rooftop next to a spectacular Gaudi-designed structure, being serenaded by a friend and cotraveler of R & V, who drove a bus in his non-Barcelona life and had brought his saxophone.
2000 - 28 years old
We had moved some months before to Utrecht, the Netherlands, because why not, and because T was getting her master's degree in European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. At this time we were nine months away from getting married, which was going to happen in Holland, meaning family and friends would be forced to leave, briefly, AmericaWorld, and they deserved to be welcomed by a couple that was not fat and nasty, hence an effort was underway to Be Good -- a new New Way, one that I was finally on board with. However, our apartment was over a Middle Eastern restaurant and next door to a hash bar. Outside our streetside window our downfall awaited in the form of one huge bright sign blaring "WIETSTOCK" ("WEEDSTOCK" - get it?) and another trumpeting "SHALOM - BEST SHOARMA IN TOWN" (shoarma = spiced meat hacked off a twirling slab and stuffed into a pita). The rest of that birthday, after we gave in to these twin vices, is unavailable to memory.
2001 - 29 years old
We had moved some months before to Iowa City, because of the reason whose faint traces echo through this blog, and T was delighted to discover that sushi was available in Iowa. We had too much sake and laughed uncontrollably at our little table at Three Samurai in Coralville. It was a Wednesday, and at my misguided insistence we went to TalkArt afterward, where we were shockingly inappropriate, making out in a booth while the poor writer read her story about a rape.
2002 - 30 years old
We packed the Sanctuary with friends and had a classic session for the "home birthday," and spent a couple days in Chicago for the "away birthday," where we pretended we were still in our 20s and went to a dark, divey club on the west side and saw the New Duncan Imperials, a rowdy, legendary bar band. Sure we shook our asses.
2003 - 31 years old
Vegas. Ostensibly for a "PocketPC conference," as we were writing a trade book together about this device (don't ask), but we spent far more time at Slots of Fun drinking margaritas the size of our legs. Our Birthday Gal was served burgers and champagne in bed. Next day we drove to Area 51, and T was so hungover she bought a straw hat to banish the sun and spent most of the drive moaning and taking pictures of her feet. Lunch at The Little Ale'Inn, amid photos of UFOs and Greys, was shaky but fairly hilarious. On our way back we drove right up to the Deadly Force Authorized sign and, sure as shootin', T was able to video a UFO glittering along a mountain ridge deep inside the base that does not exist. The "X Files" birthday.
2004 - 32 years old
T ran the Race For the Schools in Iowa and jetted off to San Francisco to run a half marathon. On the actual birth-day, we had a nice time playing Scrabble at Quinton's with some Big Girls.
2005 - 33 years old
Behold, verily the Jesus Year commenceth. We had gone to Amsterdam for T to run a marathon and go on a job interview, although we woke up in our rented houseboat two hours after the marathon had begun, and we also managed to fit in a visit to her newly discovered half brother Alfie in Dublin. This was some birthday present: a boy born in secret to her mother six years before T's birth, who had recently battled the unhelpful Irish adoption laws and found his half sisters and the rest of the family. T and I met him for the first time at his home, expecting to spend an hour or two there and then go see These Charming Men, the "best Smiths cover band in Ireland." Instead, we all got wrapped up in so many conversations that we ended up staying with Alfie and his wife and two kids. Next morning they even drove us to the airport.
2006 - 34 years old
And now she sits in a tan J-Lo velvet-y track suit and pink fuzzy slippers, which, when I began to mock them, she reminded me all were given to her by my mother, here she sits, Jesus's senior, editing and writing at the dining room table here in East Sandwich, hot as ever, still putting up with me, training again for an impending half marathon, still being the classiest, coolest chick I've ever known. Happy birthday, Trace! Thanks for spending so many of them with me -- and for forgiving and forgetting those times oh so long ago and remote, back when I wasn't perfect. I love you, sweetie, now and forever more. Amen!
10.16.2006
The Continuing Erotic Adventures of Allen Ruskin, Headmaster of Educational Aid
Ruskin, the rapacious rapscallion, reclined in his rascally rectory, remembering his repugnant rut with a rubbery resurrectionist he'd met along the Royal Road. He watched the trees outside his window.
"I am bored as the Devil," sighed Ruskin. "It has been hours since I have had some relief! I need some resupinate resuscitation to relieve my restless reseda reptile before it ruptures and requires a requiem or a requiescat. Bart, get in here! I have some scrivening for you to attend to!"
"I would prefer not to," called his embattled employee from the front hall.
"Bah! I should never have let Gingernuts go! He was good for something!" snapped Ruskin.
Suddenly, a woman darkened Ruskin's doorway. Although older, she was not without her charms.
"And who may you be?"
"I am Miss Havisham, of Scotland Yard," said the woman.
"I've never met a bobby with boobies. Do you have a stick? Or perhaps handcuffs?" asked Ruskin, sitting up in his chair. He rubbed the top of his mahogany desk. Somewhere, he heard the wild drums of heathen Africa in the distance. Women policemen? The wheels of his wretched wickedness turned with thoughts of new witchery.
"What?" snapped Miss Havisham.
"I am sorry -- I mispoke. You caught me at a loss. It has been a very hard day. My days are always very hard. Very hard. How may I help you?" asked Ruskin, slowly slithering around his desk with the relentless surety of a tree root tearing down a stone wall to get to some forbidden water on the other side. "Bart! Get Miss Havisham a drink. Perhaps some cool port on such a hot day?"
"It is not so very hot," answered Miss Havisham. She was still cross. Even so, as he passed from behind his desk, she couldn't help but be mesmerized by the manifest manikin that manfully molded his mesomorphic mesothorax .
"Is it not?" leered the lusty legator. "I feel some heat coming on. Bart!"
"I would prefer not to," called Bart sadly.
"Damn it, you blackguard! I should have never let Gingernuts go -- you see ..."
"We really should get down to business . There's been some rumours going around campus about you and some of our sensitive young students," said Miss Havisham.
"What kind of rumours?"
Miss Havisham blushed. "I really couldn't repeat them."
"But you could, you really could," said Ruskin, his eyes scanning Havisham's decotellage as if they were two blue ticks looking for the best place to attach and begin sucking. "Perhaps someone has provided a sketch?" asked Ruskin hopefully.
"Sir, I must ask you what you have been up to with your students. You must give me a straight answer."
"I would love nothing more than to give it to you straight," declared the cocky counselor. "I was simply helping the young ladies practice their Latin."
"You were? I am learned in Latin."
"Does your tongue not trip over its tintinnabulations?"
"Doesn't everyone's?" she asked timorously, as Ruskin's tentacles reached out to her.
"My tongue does not. My tongue is always as sure as the anteater seeking the Queen at the center of the hill -- and it will stop at nothing until it gets there. Would you like to see?" he asked with all the delicacy of a voluntarious daemon.
"My -- maybe I would like a small glass of port," said Miss Havisham. "I suddenly feel as if I might swoon."
"Scotland Yard is no place for a woman. Not until the helper monkeys are finished. Come, recline for a while in my office." The door closed with a soft click.
A moment later it opened again. The indelicate inquisitor's face was red from inebriate.
"Bart -- Get me some port ... and Miss Havisham's horse ... and a barrel of lamp oil!" The door slammed again. It was soon followed by the curious cries of those cradled and coddled by Cupid's connubial carresses.
"I would prefer not to," sighed the sad scrivener to the empty room. He readjusted the padlock and chains he kept wrapped around his groin and went back to work.
10.13.2006
Gary Shteyngart and George Saunders reading
Entertaining video from the New Yorker festival. Shteyngart (whose Russian Debutante's Handbook I am currently absorbing) reads from "Absurdistan," and Saunders reads from his new story collection.
Charles Frazier's sophomore(ic?) effort
A New Yorker book reviewer a few weeks ago neatly punctured my high expectations of Frazier's new book Thirteen Moons, but this vicious Slate review absolutely eviserates the thing. Calls it "a disgrace"! If you love negative reviews, you gotta read it.
Man, what a disappointment. I admit to loving Cold Mountain. I read it twice. The voice in that book hooked me and didn't let go. I was mesmerized, smitten. But was I fooled? I remember one of our workshop teachers dismissing the book in class as a "cheap McCarthy knockoff," and I thought no, you are wrong, sir. Is it possible that Cold Mountain was great and Thirteen Moons sucks? Or did Cold Mountain suck more subtly? Has anyone here read the new one?
I can sense the "I-told-you-so's" ... (winces, glancing sheepishly in TLB's direction).
Man, what a disappointment. I admit to loving Cold Mountain. I read it twice. The voice in that book hooked me and didn't let go. I was mesmerized, smitten. But was I fooled? I remember one of our workshop teachers dismissing the book in class as a "cheap McCarthy knockoff," and I thought no, you are wrong, sir. Is it possible that Cold Mountain was great and Thirteen Moons sucks? Or did Cold Mountain suck more subtly? Has anyone here read the new one?
I can sense the "I-told-you-so's" ... (winces, glancing sheepishly in TLB's direction).
10.12.2006
Is Jim Leach going to lose?
Consituent Dynamics is publishing its latest poll on congressional races. Click the link, then choose "Iowa District 2" from "Select a District." He's down 48% to 47% to David Loebsack. If Leach is in trouble, November really might be a landslide. I have written/emailed him a few times, and he always responds with polite, carefully nonpartisan letters. He's pro-choice, voted against the 2002 Iraq War Resolution, and was the only Republican in the house to vote against the 2003 tax cut. But Iowa City's is the most Democratic district in Iowa, and the default setting should be (D). He's been on borrowed time since 1977. His time may be up.
10.07.2006
Battlestar Galactica and the war in Iraq
Battlestar Galactica is back for its third season. The first episode premiered last night on the Sci Fi Channel. Yesterday afternoon I ran across the following while reading my favorite conservative blog, The Corner, one of the National Review's blogs, in which a contributor, Jonah Goldberg, posted from an email he had received from a reader (scroll down to the 2:20 post from Friday Oct. 6), who said:
I rolled my eyes when I read that -- I read The Corner to give my eyeballs exactly that kind of swiveling exercise. But I hadn't watched any of the webisodes, so I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was (spoiler alert) that at the end of last season Vice President Gaius Baltar had won the election for president of the Colonies, after the president, Laura Roslin, had been caught trying to fix the election (you root for her to fix it! -- one of the amazing things about the show). As Charlemagne pointed out here some time ago, the series actually makes you root for a military dictatorship:
And so down most of them went to the surface. Many months went by. The planet was fairly bleak. Nothing fancy here. They built tent shelters, formed a camp. A sparse existence on firm ground must be better than living on a spaceship that's constantly under attack. And it was peaceful. No sign of Cylons. The people thought they were out of the woods. Then suddenly the Cylons came back, found the folks defenseless, and forced a surrender from the sleazy, corrupt Baltar. The ships in orbit, with their skeleton crews, "jumped" away (the only way to ditch the Cylons when they show up) and left the people to endure brutal Cylon occupation. (They are coming back. We know this. It's fiction -- you can take it to the bank.)
What does this have to do with Iraq? Well ... now there's an insurgency against the occupation, complete with suicide bombings and the characters wrestling with the moral dilemmas of insurgent warfare. There is now a human Colonial Police Force, trained by the Cylons to maintain order. A suicide bomber blew up their graduation ceremony -- 33 dead. The parallel is too obvious to dwell on.
This is exactly what Mr. Goldberg's reader was worried about. And if I were conservative, the show would now be making me very uncomfortable. After all, in our national mythology we prefer our insurgencies to be staffed by evil extremists, our suicide bombers to be anonymous, dark-skinned, whacked-out, our occupiers to be white Republican men.
The purpose of war propaganda is to turn those Other people into its. The enemies are not really people anyway, are they? A neighbor is a person, a family member, a friend, and yes, so is a fictional character. Admiral Adama, former President Roslin, Starbuck -- these are people to me. They reside in a friendly place in my mind. I think about them, look forward to seeing them, root for them as I squirm on my couch. That's the power of fiction. It's every bit as powerful as propaganda (while it lasts -- propaganda is 24/7).
It's fairly subversive to do this, even under a fictional premise. That is why Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin) praised the BSG creators for their "brave and beautiful act." And rightly so. They are doing the things that writers are supposed to do: Find something important about human nature, serve it up with style, expand the reader's (or viewer's) humanity, make you care about the characters. The old saw runs: Nonfiction uses the truth to tell lies, and fiction uses lies to tell the truth. Here's one truth: humanity is universal. Speaking truth to power "is always death," according to the Corner reader's Krustyite philosophy. But that's not it -- those in power already know the truth. They would just rather no one talk about it.
Ever since the astounding conclusion of last season's BSG, I was pumped for this year's new episodes. However, I'm getting a very bad vibe about it being a multi-episode Iraq war bashfest. In particular, the webisodes - which, in all honesty, I've only seen the first five or six - draw complimentary parallels between the jihadi "insurgents" and the human resistance forces on New Caprica.In response, Mr. Goldberg merely commented, "I hear what this reader is saying, but they've earned my trust at the outset. So we'll see."
Plus, there's a story on Zap2it.com where Mary McDonnell, in discussing this season's plot arc, commends the BSG brain trust for their "brave and beautiful act" in putting together this year's series.
A "brave & beautiful act," I believe, is vapid actorspeak for "speaking truth to power." To quote Krusty the Clown, "Oooooo, this is always death."
So I'm afraid for this one. Any words of encouragement?
I rolled my eyes when I read that -- I read The Corner to give my eyeballs exactly that kind of swiveling exercise. But I hadn't watched any of the webisodes, so I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was (spoiler alert) that at the end of last season Vice President Gaius Baltar had won the election for president of the Colonies, after the president, Laura Roslin, had been caught trying to fix the election (you root for her to fix it! -- one of the amazing things about the show). As Charlemagne pointed out here some time ago, the series actually makes you root for a military dictatorship:
I seem to root for the military and their control of the government. I think, this silly group of civilians can't possibly know how to save the human race from sexy horrible robots! But then I say, "Oh. I guess I came in against freedom of representation. Freedom of the press. Etc." Then I feel like an ass.Anyway, Baltar won the election and decided to move everyone from the colony ships down to this planet they had just discovered. The 40-odd thousand colonists have been on the run from Cylons -- the "sexy horrible robots" -- for a long time, but the people were growing weary, and here was a decent enough planet where they could lay down their burdens ("Lay Down Your Burdens" was the title of the Season Two finale).
And so down most of them went to the surface. Many months went by. The planet was fairly bleak. Nothing fancy here. They built tent shelters, formed a camp. A sparse existence on firm ground must be better than living on a spaceship that's constantly under attack. And it was peaceful. No sign of Cylons. The people thought they were out of the woods. Then suddenly the Cylons came back, found the folks defenseless, and forced a surrender from the sleazy, corrupt Baltar. The ships in orbit, with their skeleton crews, "jumped" away (the only way to ditch the Cylons when they show up) and left the people to endure brutal Cylon occupation. (They are coming back. We know this. It's fiction -- you can take it to the bank.)
What does this have to do with Iraq? Well ... now there's an insurgency against the occupation, complete with suicide bombings and the characters wrestling with the moral dilemmas of insurgent warfare. There is now a human Colonial Police Force, trained by the Cylons to maintain order. A suicide bomber blew up their graduation ceremony -- 33 dead. The parallel is too obvious to dwell on.
This is exactly what Mr. Goldberg's reader was worried about. And if I were conservative, the show would now be making me very uncomfortable. After all, in our national mythology we prefer our insurgencies to be staffed by evil extremists, our suicide bombers to be anonymous, dark-skinned, whacked-out, our occupiers to be white Republican men.
The purpose of war propaganda is to turn those Other people into its. The enemies are not really people anyway, are they? A neighbor is a person, a family member, a friend, and yes, so is a fictional character. Admiral Adama, former President Roslin, Starbuck -- these are people to me. They reside in a friendly place in my mind. I think about them, look forward to seeing them, root for them as I squirm on my couch. That's the power of fiction. It's every bit as powerful as propaganda (while it lasts -- propaganda is 24/7).
It's fairly subversive to do this, even under a fictional premise. That is why Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin) praised the BSG creators for their "brave and beautiful act." And rightly so. They are doing the things that writers are supposed to do: Find something important about human nature, serve it up with style, expand the reader's (or viewer's) humanity, make you care about the characters. The old saw runs: Nonfiction uses the truth to tell lies, and fiction uses lies to tell the truth. Here's one truth: humanity is universal. Speaking truth to power "is always death," according to the Corner reader's Krustyite philosophy. But that's not it -- those in power already know the truth. They would just rather no one talk about it.
10.06.2006
Iowa City Arts: October
Apologies for getting this posted so late in the week. I was a little daunted by such an incredible lineup. Let me know in the comments what I've missed. As always, everything's free unless indicated.
October Lectures
October Lectures
- Friday, 10.6, 12 noon, ICPL Meeting Room A. - Lou Ye from China, Rafael Courtoisie from Uruguay and Mazen Sa'adeh from Ramallah/Palestinian Authority. A panel discussion titled "Writing for Two and Three Dimensions." Follow that link for more info. Paired with screening--see Movies section.
- Friday, 10.6, 4 p.m. - Brenda Hillman, "Revising Revision." This is part of the new lecture series and should be in the Frank Conroy Reading Room at the Dey House. Get there early to either a) get a seat, or b) learn you need to make the walk to the business building.
- Monday, 10.9, 8 p.m. - John Toth, "intermedia artist," will discuss his work in Room 116 of the Art Building West. Examples of his work.
- Wednesday, 10.18, 8 p.m. - Michael Chabon. Not sure whether to put this under lectures or readings, but it's possible he'll give us a taste of the forthcoming The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Get to the Buchannan Auditorium in Pappajohn Business building early.
- Friday, 10.20, 4 p.m. - Opening ceremony for Glenn Schaefer Library and Archives. Dey House.
- Friday, 10.8, 8 p.m. - Lou Ye's award-winning, banned-in-China film "Summer Palace." Screened in Room 105 of the Adler Journalism building. Link for plot summary.
- 10.6-10.12 - Quinceanera and Look Both Ways at the Bijou. Showtimes and brief summaries at links. Tix $5.
- 10.13-10.19 - The Bridesmaid and Army of Shadows (trailer here) at the Bijou. Summaries and trailers at links. Showtimes to follow here. Tix $5/$4.
- 10.20-10.26 - 13 Tzameti and Bresson's Mouchette at the Bijou. Showtimes to come here. Tix $5/$4.
- 10.20 and 10.21 - Screening and workshop with the Angry Filmaker.
- 10.27-11.2 - Half Nelson and Spirit of the Beehive at the Bijou. Showtimes to come here. Tix $5/$4.
- Friday, 10.6, 5 p.m. - U Moe Hein and Russell Valentino, poetry and prose reading as part of the International Writing Program reading series. The Paul Engle Lounge of Shambaugh House on Clinton.
- Wednesday, 10.11, 7 p.m. - Nell Freudenberger. This "lucky girl" (I couldn't resist) will read from her novel, The Dissident.
- Thursday, 10.12, 8:15 p.m. - Denis Johnson. Shambaugh Auditorium of the UI Main Library. Free, but donations of copper wire will never be turned down.
- Friday, 10.13, 5 p.m. - Fadhil Thamir of Iraq and Partaw Naderi of Afghanistan read poetry at Shambaugh House.
- Friday, 10.13, 7 p.m. - Kevin Moffett reads at Prairie Lights from his award-winning short story collection. (Thanks, MSF.)
- Sunday, 10.15, 1 p.m. - Mark Danielewski at Prairie Lights. Follow along with your copy of Only Revolutions, so you can figure out how to read the damn thing.
- Monday, 10.16, 7 p.m. - Dara Horn, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, reads from her second novel.
- Tuesday, 10.17, 5:30 p.m.(or 7 p.m.? Check back. I'll verify.) - Kelly Link, author of the acclaimed (and rightfully so) Magic for Beginners, reads at Prairie Lights. This'll get you in the holiday spirit.
- Thursday, 10.19, 7 p.m. - Patrick Irelan, non-fiction reading at Prairie Lights.
- Friday, 10.20, 7 p.m. - Alice McDermott, reads from her new novel, After This, at Prairie Lights.
- Monday, 10.23, 7 p.m. - Heidi Julavits, editor of The Believer, reads from her new novel at Prairie Lights.
- Tuesday, 10.24, 7 p.m. - Jane Hamilton reads from her new novel at Shambaugh Auditorium in the UI Main Library.
- Wednesday, 10.25, 7 p.m. - Barry Lopez, author of the incredible Arctic Dreams, reads nonfiction at Prairie Lights.
- Thursday, 10.26, 7 p.m. - Joe Miller reads from his nonfiction: Cross X, a book-length examination of an inner-Kansas City debate team. At Prairie Lights.
- Thursday, 10.27, 8 p.m. - James Tate reads poetry in Lecture Room 2 of Van Allen Hall. I thought of him often during the selection of this latest pope. For obvious reasons.
- Tuesday, 10.31, 7 p.m. - Patricia Hampl reads from her new nonfiction meditation on art and experience at Prairie Lights.
10.04.2006
So did he register himself as an offender?
Mark Foley on Bill O'Reilly's show, urging passage of the Child Safety Act (via Wonkette).
9.30.2006
All you poets who secretly write fiction...
Wanted to call your attention to the job search at Bucknell, seeking a poet who also has some prose publications (fiction or non-fiction). The listing can be found in all the usual places. If you're interested, please apply. If you know of someone who should be interested, but who's not paying attention to these things, give them a tap on the shoulder please.
(Excuse the change in screen names, but I realized I should be masking my superhero status on these blogs. In keeping with the dog theme, I'm now...)
(Excuse the change in screen names, but I realized I should be masking my superhero status on these blogs. In keeping with the dog theme, I'm now...)
9.29.2006
Fight the dictatorship
It's finally happened after 217 years. The Congress has voted to give the president dictatorial powers. Under the antiterrorism legislation passed yesterday, Bushius Caesar now has the right to arrest anyone and hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial or letting them see evidence against them or chance for appeal -- and to torture them, simply by calling them "illegal enemy combatants." If that's not the definition of a dictator, what is? Is that not Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini? We now have a legal framework for gulags for dissenters. Game, for the time being, over. Any of our lawyers care to comment on this? How scary is this?
There is a diary on this by a lawyer at DailyKOS. Here's a summary from the NYT:
Contribute to DNC to help win the mid-term election and change course.
Volunteer to call voters to convince people to turn away from disaster.
Join/give to the ACLU because they will have to fight this unconsitutional law in the courts.
There is a diary on this by a lawyer at DailyKOS. Here's a summary from the NYT:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
Step One has to be taking the Congress away from these disgusting traitors. Now is the time to give money if you ever thought about doing that, as tomorrow is the deadline for this Quarter.Contribute to DNC to help win the mid-term election and change course.
Volunteer to call voters to convince people to turn away from disaster.
Join/give to the ACLU because they will have to fight this unconsitutional law in the courts.
9.28.2006
Daddy baut a coughin
Daddy has only hurd from 4 peeps -- he polisses his boomstick -- and he got a coughin for Georgie! Oh peez save my bro! Peez gyve to awkshun.
-Pogue
9.27.2006
Smart bacteria, evil yogurt, and the end of security
Every once in a while, the Internets lead you to some nugget of what-the-bloody-hell... Ian Pearson is a futurologist for British Telecom, and here is a snippet -- okay, a long stretch -- from an interview he did last week with a Welsh technology news site I just stumbled across (sweet dreams!):
There's another one - the security threat from hell. Think of the Terminator movies. The technology of that is pretty much obsolete by the time we get to 2020, a prototype of the T-2 liquid metal robot has already been done, and with nanotechnology is will be possible to make that work. That's not the problem to worry about.
DNA is already being used in a test tube to assemble macro electronic circuits - basically shove in a suspension of carbon nano tubes and gold particles, stir in some DNA. You can persuade the DNA to assemble the gold particles onto the end of the carbon nano tubes and make simple circuits. That was demonstrated about two years ago, and the company has gone secret since, as they are now working on developing more sophisticated circuits. The idea is that you do bottom up assembly which is the next generation of chip assembly by using DNA and protein clusters to basically grab the stuff and stick it together using clever chemistry. The key point is that you can do this with DNA.
We were thinking, one of the good ways of doing this is spending billions of pounds for a real live bacterium - e-coli, or something you find in yoghurt - and you don't modify it so much that it can't survive because you want it to replicate, but you modify it so that it creates electronic circuits within its' own cells. That's really good fun then, because you've got electronic bacteria - real live bacterium which can replicate with electronics in it. The electronics have nothing to do with the bacteria, they are just there, but they turn it into "smart bacteria", because you can then connect those electronics together using infrared or bioluminescence and make completely scalable electronic circuits. So you start off with one bacterium, which is essentially a module, and you link billions of these together and you've got something that makes your PC look pretty primitive. You've got a "smart yoghurt" by about 2025, and we did the calculations, and we reckon that it's possible to make a yoghurt with roughly the same processing power as the entire European population.
It gets worse. If it's yoghurt, you can just bung it in the bin, but unfortunately yoghurt is just the bacterial suspension. Bacteria is all around us, in everything we touch, everywhere you look around your office. There's also bacteria in your body - in fact more bacterial cells than human cells - and an awful lot of diseases can change your psychological behaviour.
Keeping the Terminator theme, the T-4 robot is totally invisible - it's based on bacteria - you breathe them in via the air supply and they directly change what you want to do. You can't fight against that. In the War of the Worlds, there were all these sophisticated space ships that got destroyed by the germs in the end - that could be the future for humanity. In all seriousness, one of the biggest threats we face this century is probably smart bacteria, and as a security risk it's enormous.
At the moment we're relying on encryption and firewalls and other security measures to stop people stealing your passwords. In the future, all I have to do is let some bacteria into your building; they float through the air conditioning system, land on your keyboard, you can't see them, you don't know they are there. They record every single keystroke and report it back to me. As if that's not enough, they could also be listening to what you're talking about, and even directly interface with your brain if necessary, and they can certainly float in through the vents on your PC and access the chips.
So how do you manage security in that sort of a world? I would say that there will not be any security from 2025 onwards, because I do not see how you could possibly do it. You just can't get rid of the bacteria - you could use bacterial filters in the air supply, but you can't afford to do that for every single bit of air everywhere in the entire country. We don't even have the beginnings of understanding how to deal with that kind of threat, and yet that threat could happen in as little as twenty years time.
There will of course be a lot of technological developments in that time, but the fact is, you can imagine some smart scientist in a rogue regime developing this as a terrorist weapon, and you can certainly imagine people doing this deliberately so that we've got an almost infinite supply of computing on demand for perfectly benign purposes, and then unfortunately it goes wrong. Essentially it's a major security threat - smart bacteria is one of the ways you could wipe out humanity, and it's an extinction level threat if it goes wrong. It's just one of the things on a list we've got of things based on technology that could wipe out humanity. It's the T-4 robot essentially, and we know people are working in that direction now.
Music expert wanted for editing project
Do you fit the following description or know someone who does?
1. Masters' degree in Music
2. Familiarity with Microsoft Word
3. Ability and time to read 2 or 3 chapters a week of a 300-page book on basic music theory
4. Desire to make some good, fairly easy money
If so, please email me at earthgoat@gmail.com
1. Masters' degree in Music
2. Familiarity with Microsoft Word
3. Ability and time to read 2 or 3 chapters a week of a 300-page book on basic music theory
4. Desire to make some good, fairly easy money
If so, please email me at earthgoat@gmail.com
Georgie gunna dye
i thynk daddy really plans to chute my bro -- peeze give to the awkshun -- he only hurd from 1 good sole -- now he yells and he's bought a boomstick and a suitcase full of beer -- peeze save my bruther -- peeze -- for the luv of the Great Collie that Watches over Us Awl (except kats, hoo r devils)-- Pogue Mahone
More Love for Murakami
I don't understand. I feel, at this point, like the guy arguing Angelina Jolie isn't hot while his friends stand around stupefied and embarrassed and maybe a little suspicious.
9.26.2006
South Coast Auction Needs YOU!
I am on the board of an auction here to provide stipends for law students who want to work in the area of public interest law to benefit our community. I've already sent out an email to the addresses I had, but I thought this would be a great opportunity for all the friends and assassins who visit our lowly little electronic corner to donate one of their signed works -- photo, CD, book, broadside, painting, whatever.
My idea is to create an auction collection of "new art." I think it will go over great, and provide everyone with some of the exposure they deserve. Don't be coy -- you're all freakin' geniuses, or I wouldn't be asking.
Of course, this is also a referendum on if anyone likes me.
And I'll shoot George if I don't get anything.
But, be that as it may, please let me know -- and please give!
9.22.2006
By the grace of Cod
Headquarters is now a rental house on the Cape, far, far from Iowa. Instead of corn, there are cranberries. Cut farmers, paste lobstermen. There is actually one Dunkin' Donuts store per citizen, and they are all staffed by unintelligible former lunch ladies from Bulgaria. Strange system: you tell them what you want in your coffee, and they do it. I heard a woman ask for "three quahtas of an Equal, hon." I for one prefer to complete my order hunched in privacy at the cream and sugar counter, thank you very much, because it's nobody's business how I like my beverage. But it is faster, I suppose, and as Traca da Broon points out, this way you don't have to wait in two lines.
We drive a lot now, go through a tank every three or four days. We have a mall in Hyannis, a gym in Sandwich, a doctor in Mashpee, and a nephew in Falmouth. And when you drive you have to stop at Dunkin' Donuts every five miles. I believe it's a state law -- sorry, commonwealth law. Went to the Bodyworlds exhibit in Boston, feeling sick most of the way through it. Funny how Real Human Bodies don't look real yet can make me nauseated all the same. "Woman's Abdomen Showing Massive Constipation" sure was a highlight. In the other direction we have Provincetown. Didn't see you, Nam! Should have emailed first. Next time. Bigger and more elaborately cute than I had expected.
The beach is cool, a couple hundred yards' walk. Dogs dig it. Mind the rocks and dead crabs! Mainly things are quiet so far. A new phase. Lots of writing, reading, and work. And cable TV. Took us days to figure out how to tell what's on TV! Haven't had it since 1999! What do we know about what to watch without putting in a DVD? We're like, as my sister pointed out, "people from China." "America's Top Model" seemed as good as anything, and, as it turned out, it was. I totally couldn't believe what that one bitch said about the other one that one time. I was like I so hope you're booted off at the end, and when she wasn't we realized that they're keeping the bitch on because we hate her -- they know we watch to hate -- and we began to hate ourselves for that. But only a little bit. Not as much as we hated that bitch. TV watching suggestions welcome. We're ready for "Lost," for "Battlestar Galactica," for "Deadwood." Has George's gone out of business yet, or are y'all making up for our lack?
9.19.2006
The Continuing Erotic Adventures of Allen Ruskin, Headmaster of Educational Aid
Ruskin, the swinish solicitor, was engaged in his morning constitutional with his two great hounds, Cerebus and Baskerville, striding manfully across the law school's lawns and taking in a crisp fall day.
"This is such a crisp fall day," he thought to himself. "I am glad I am taking it in."
His feet led him down the hill and past the newly-coed swimming pool, where many of the new girls were engaged in a class on Admiralty. He immediately spotted Dottie. Her red hair was like a lucious cherry bobbing over a half-submerged vanilla ice cream sundae.
"Miss Gale, could you come over here please?" asked the demonic dean.
Dottie got out of the pool and walked over to where Ruskin was standing. "This place is so much more than Kansas. I don't think I could ever go back there," she said.
"I would hope that you would not. We need girls like you in the study of the law, especially when the trained helper monkeys' cages need freshening up. There won't be any trained helper-monkeys in such a legal backwater as Kansas, I can assure you," said Ruskin, his eyes agog at the aquatic action going on just aft of Dottie's shoulders. The girls' suits were scandals -- his base eye appraised more than one young bare calf.
"Those are quite big dogs, Headmaster Ruskin," said Dottie, the water and cold air accentuating her womanly charms.
Ruskin pried his puerile peepers from the pool's Penelopes. "You can pet them," he said.
"But they are so large and hairy."
"A young lady should never be afraid to pet large and hairy things," leered the amorous advocate.
"Oh my."
"Here -- I think it is time for another tutoring session," said Ruskin, that caddish codger of conjugal carnality. He tied the dogs to a large tree and then pushed Dottie into a clump of nearby rose bushes. She fell back in a swoon. "Oh my!"
But as soon as they were in the bushes, the engorged exhibitionist found himself immdiately emasculated.
"Did you prick yourself?" asked Dottie.
"If I was going to prick myself, I wouldn't be out here with you, would I? What in blue blazes is that infernal cracking sound?" screamed the impetuous idolator. "I can't concentrate with such racket! It sounds like some hedonistic Hottentots having a hellish howdown."
"Oh, that's Alice -- she has a thing for croquet," said Dottie, lying licentiously lusty within the lawn's lucious leaves. "I think I need assault explained to me again."
"In due time," snapped Ruskin. Ruskin stuck his fiendish face flush out of the rose bush. Across the lawn was a pretty blonde girl in a sweet blue dress. "You there! What are you doing? I am trying to tutor a student and I would like some quiet please!"
Alice looked up from red croquet ball she was about to hit across the yard. "I was just smacking balls, sir. I'm sorry, I will do it elsewhere."
"You like smacking balls, do you?" asked Ruskin, a terrible twinkle ticking in the crevice of his eye.
"More than anything."
"Well, why don't you come over here -- my TA and I might be of service in such an exercise! -- And bring that mallet!!"
**** What's next for this Lusty Legal Lucifer -- find out next week!
George Saunders: half-million-dollar genius
The MacArthur Genius grants were announced, and Saunders is among the recipients.
9.18.2006
Oh God Damn it ...
From Michael Rogers
Columnist
Special to MSNBC
“Literacy experts and educators say they are stunned by the results of a recent adult literacy assessment, which shows that the reading proficiency of college graduates has declined in the past decade, with no obvious explanation.
“’It's appalling -- it's really astounding,’ said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. ‘Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder.’”
--The Washington Post, December 25, 2005
December 25, 2025 — Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.
The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once more being used to flail an education trend that is in fact going in just the right direction. Today’s young people are not able to read and understand long stretches of text simply because in most cases they won’t ever need to do so.
It’s time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don’t need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers.
We’re not talking about complete illiteracy, which is most certainly not a good thing. Young people today, however, have plenty of literacy for everyday activities such as reading signs and package labels, and writing brief e-mails and text messages that don’t require accurate spelling or grammar.
Text labels also remain a useful way to navigate Web sites, although increasingly site design has evolved toward icons and audio prompts. Managers, in turn, have learned to use audio or video messaging as much as possible with workers, and to make sure that no text message ever contains more than one idea.
In 2025, when a worker actually needs to work with text, easy-to-use dictation, autoparsing and text-to-speech software allows him or her to create, edit and listen to documents without relying on extensive written skills. And any media analyst on Wall Street will confirm that the vast majority of Americans now consume virtually all of their entertainment and information through multimedia channels in which text is either optional or unnecessary.
In both the 19th and 20th centuries, the ability to read long texts was seen as an unquestioned social good. And back then, the prescription made sense: media technology was limited and in order to take part in both society and workplace, the ability to read books and long articles seemed essential. In 2025, higher-level literacy is probably necessary for only 10 percent of the American population.
It’s worth keeping in mind that reading itself is an inherently artificial human activity, an invention that in evolutionary terms has existed only for a blink of an eye. School districts have wasted billions of dollars in recent decades to correct “reading disabilities” when in fact there is no such thing as “reading ability” to start with. Reading is an artificial construct that is of high value for a very limited set human activities — but by no means all activities.
There is no question that reading is a desirable and often enjoyable skill to possess. In 2025, tens of millions of Americans continue to enjoy books and magazines as recreational pursuits, and this happy habit will undoubtedly remain part of the landscape for generations to come. But just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. For the majority of students, reading and writing are difficult enterprises with limited payoffs in the modern world.
Some positions in society do require significant literacy skills: senior managers, screenwriters, scientists and others need a highly efficient way to absorb and communicate abstract thought. A broad written vocabulary and strong compositional skills are also powerful ways to organize and plan large enterprises, whether that means launching a new product, making a movie or creating legislation. But for the vast number of the workers who actually carry out those plans, the same skills are far less crucial. The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional.
We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training.
In 2025 it’s time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity!
Book abandonment vol. 2
Title of Book: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel
Author: Susanna Clarke
A. Total pages: 1006
B. Page reached: 566
Percent finished (divide B by A): 56.3%
What was happening on the page where you stopped? Jonathan Strange begins moving some more roads in Belgium to delay Napoleon's army from getting reinforcements.
How long did you try to read the book? Two weeks and change.
Reason(s) for abandoning: At first I found the book absolutely delightful and could hardly be dragged from it. I called it "Harry Potter for adults." But gradually, as the war with Napoleon dragged on, the premise of an alternative history of English magic stopped being enough for me, and I became restless and disappointed. Yes, it was a great idea, but I found it wasn't a thousand-page idea. Instead of looking forward to picking it up, I came to dread it. And the characters, though interesting, began to feel like exercises. I felt the author was having too easy of a time. And the characters didn't seem to have enough at stake. Which sounds strange, I know, given that they are helping England defeat the French. But I found myself growing impatient at the arbitrary limits of the magicians' tricks, for example. Was moving roads and scaring troops with phantoms really all Strange could do? Why couldn't he remove the ground from underneath Napoleon's army? Why couldn't he surround the army with a wall, capturing them in an instant? Or make their guns not work? So this book of imagination began to fail in imaginative terms -- in going incredibly far, I found it didn't go far enough. Magic is a tough thing to manage in fiction.
Have you abandoned a book by this author before? Nope.
For the same reasons? N/A
Have you finished a book by this author before? Nope.
Is there anything that would get you to finish the book? I suppose if someone could convince me that it's all worth it, that my qualms would end up satisfied, that the author overcomes the problem I describe.
Is there another book you're planning to read instead? Yes, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I was actually 50 pages into that when I picked up Jonathan Strange. Then Swann's Way.
Do you think you'll ever try again and finish the book? I don't think so.
Author: Susanna Clarke
A. Total pages: 1006
B. Page reached: 566
Percent finished (divide B by A): 56.3%
What was happening on the page where you stopped? Jonathan Strange begins moving some more roads in Belgium to delay Napoleon's army from getting reinforcements.
How long did you try to read the book? Two weeks and change.
Reason(s) for abandoning: At first I found the book absolutely delightful and could hardly be dragged from it. I called it "Harry Potter for adults." But gradually, as the war with Napoleon dragged on, the premise of an alternative history of English magic stopped being enough for me, and I became restless and disappointed. Yes, it was a great idea, but I found it wasn't a thousand-page idea. Instead of looking forward to picking it up, I came to dread it. And the characters, though interesting, began to feel like exercises. I felt the author was having too easy of a time. And the characters didn't seem to have enough at stake. Which sounds strange, I know, given that they are helping England defeat the French. But I found myself growing impatient at the arbitrary limits of the magicians' tricks, for example. Was moving roads and scaring troops with phantoms really all Strange could do? Why couldn't he remove the ground from underneath Napoleon's army? Why couldn't he surround the army with a wall, capturing them in an instant? Or make their guns not work? So this book of imagination began to fail in imaginative terms -- in going incredibly far, I found it didn't go far enough. Magic is a tough thing to manage in fiction.
Have you abandoned a book by this author before? Nope.
For the same reasons? N/A
Have you finished a book by this author before? Nope.
Is there anything that would get you to finish the book? I suppose if someone could convince me that it's all worth it, that my qualms would end up satisfied, that the author overcomes the problem I describe.
Is there another book you're planning to read instead? Yes, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I was actually 50 pages into that when I picked up Jonathan Strange. Then Swann's Way.
Do you think you'll ever try again and finish the book? I don't think so.
9.17.2006
9.14.2006
Things are gonna change, I can feel it ...
I won a record from CultureBully! And, as part of my prize, I did say I would tell all my friends (and lurkers, trolls, harpies, enemies, haters, playa-haters, hater-haters, hippies, dippies, voicers of the oppressed, fondlers of the repressed, etc. and so forth).
This is the first thing I've won since the church Easter Egg Hunt when I was 7 -- no joke -- it was a special egg with a ticket for an enormous chocolate bunny. I can actually still visualize swiping the egg mere inches away from my elementary school crush's hand (Britta -- I showed my ardor by throwing pine cones at her whenever possible -- it didn't work as well as one would think -- but I did give her the bunny's head. She graduated high school a year early and married some college dude -- sigh).
So, there it is --
All Hail CultureBully!
9.13.2006
Authors Fought the Law, and the Law...
Pamuk's problems with the government are well known, but now Elif Shafak is facing trial in Turkey. This is decidedly not cool. My question: what are the notable examples of authors going before courts in America for their fiction? Ulysses is probably a good place to start. Sayeth Judge Woolsely in 1933:
"If the conclusion is that the book is pornographic that is the end of the inquiry... But in 'Ulysses,' in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist. I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic."
He also noted that "'Ulysses' is not an easy book to read or understand" and that we should remember that "the characters are Celtic and the time is Spring." Fair.
Has anyone read Shafak? I have not.
As for Pamuk, if you haven't read Snow, you probably should because it's awesome.
"If the conclusion is that the book is pornographic that is the end of the inquiry... But in 'Ulysses,' in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist. I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic."
He also noted that "'Ulysses' is not an easy book to read or understand" and that we should remember that "the characters are Celtic and the time is Spring." Fair.
Has anyone read Shafak? I have not.
As for Pamuk, if you haven't read Snow, you probably should because it's awesome.
9.11.2006
Our Offensive Blogosphere
A list of things posted at a site that has pictures of cats that look like Hitler:
How can you possibly endorse or support facist racism? dont you know your history? it's people like you who oppressed and killed my people. do you think your that much better than us? your trying to make hitler and natzism look cute - by asociating small, adorable cats with their hatred. its NOT cute not NOT funny and i am offended. I told my grandfather who spent time at the Warstein concentration camp and he almost cried. i expect an apology!
- Moses Finklestein
This is probably the worst website I have ever seen!! Why on earth is this entertaining!? The pictures are of the same dam cat! Next thing it will be birth marks that resemble countries or celebrities!!! GET A LIFE!!!
- anonymous
Get a job!
- anonymous
I feel for the first time in my life that I have no sense of humour: no cat deserves any connection with Hitler. (am not Jewish, but would quite like to be, but I do really like cats)
- Alison
yo dude your site is kinda gay, no offence butthe catrs dont look enough like hitler, i saw one where the cat is in anazi uniform, more of those cuz thats funny, the rest is kinda gay
- Evan
I think u should die u stupid geek that is so mean to the cats its not funny its just plain mean I feel so sorry for the cats close this site down or die
- Dominic from Philip Morant School in Essex
I myself think this site is a disgrace.:( Hitler killed everything living thing there was and he would kill these cute cats if he was still here. Thank you.
- Rockell
You guys are horrible! You should be ashamed of yourselves! This siteis completely vile. What do you think gives you the right to make funof one of the world's greatest strategist in the history of time (asidefrom the right to free speech, don't give me that jargin, though, asmuch as I contradicted myself). I hope you all fall into a chamberthat's possibly filled with gas!!
- Barney
I'd like to think that I am a pretty open person with a fairly crude sense
of humor but I find your website really offensive. I don't think anything
about Hitler is funny and I think I am speaking on behalf of the MILLIONS of
Jews that he tortured and killed (some of which were my family).
- Corina
9.07.2006
This is Why My Corpse Will be Wearing a Chastity Belt -- Because Once My Picture Gets Out ...
(I DID NOT MAKE THIS UP -- FROM THE SMOKING GUN)
SEPTEMBER 6--When Nicholas Grunke last week spotted a newspaper photo of Laura Tennessen, the Wisconsin man apparently became so smitten that he plotted a rendezvous with the 20-year-old woman. But the photo Grunke saw accompanied an August 29 obituary of Tennessen, who died in a motorcycle accident. Undeterred, Grunke allegedly plotted with his twin brother Alex and a friend, 20-year-old Dustin Radke, to rob Tennessen's grave so that he could have sex with her corpse. Details of the trio's degenerate scheme are contained in a criminal complaint filed yesterday in Grant County Circuit Court. A copy of the document can be found here. In a police interview, Radke said that he and the Grunke brothers stopped at a Wal-Mart to buy condoms on their way to the cemetery. The necrophilia plot was disrupted Saturday night when police received a report of a suspicious vehicle near St. Charles Cemetery in Cassville, where Tennessen is buried. When confronted by a cop, an "very nervous" Alex Grunke admitted to the grave robbing scheme, noting that his cohorts were then digging up Tennessen's coffin. When police arrived at the gravesite, Nicholas Grunke and Radke were gone, though cops noticed that a hole had been dug down to the concrete vault encasing the woman's coffin, according to the complaint. Nicholas Grunke and Radke were later arrested while walking about eight miles from the cemetery. The men are each facing sexual assault and theft charges that could land them in prison for more than five years. Though bail has been set at $1000 apiece for the Grunke brothers and $1500 for Radke, the men remain in custody at the Grant County Jail, where the below mug shots were snapped.
9.06.2006
The Erotic Adventures of Allen Ruskin, Headmaster of Educational Aid
Allen Ruskin sat behind his very large mahogany desk admiring his new Dutch Indies clock on the far wall. Suddenly, there was a knock on his office door.
"Come in!" he yelled manfully.
"Hi. My name is Dottie Gale, and I'm a first year student here. I'm a little frightened of the bar."
Ruskin, the scandalously salacious solicitor, stared Dottie up and down. Women were new to the school, and Beacon Hill and the citizenry were enraged at the school's labial legal experiment. For his part, Ruskin was thrilled. A new century would be dawning soon, full of steamships and spacecraft and talking monkey helpers, and it was best to keep with the times. Ruskin thought of himself as both a liberal and a spiritualist, and all signs pointed to women's eventual entry into the legal profession, whether as secretary, helper-girl, or keeper of the talking helper-monkey. Plus, Ruskin was tired of looking at boys all the time.
Dottie was an exquisite creature -- with full pneumatic breasts and a neck so swan-like he expected her to sprout feathers. Her numinous blue eyes shimmered in the light from the oil lamp. Her skin was as white as morning snow before the dogs got into it. "Please. Sit down, Miss Gale. Now what scares you about the bar?" queried Ruskin, unctuously undressing her with his uncooth eyes as she unburdened herself.
"I've heard the bar is very hard," said Dottie.
"It is indeed. But a bar's hardness should not make you fear it," answered Ruskin, twirling the end of his waxed mustache.
"Well, I am very frightened all the same."
"Maybe you need some practice with a hard bar to help you relax." Ruskin stood up and sat on the front of his mahogony desk, pulling up his pants a little to show the splendid way his masculine ankles filled out the Chinese silk of his dress socks. He heard Dottie's breath catch in her throat like a fish on a reel. "Come here. Sit on the desk next to me." He patted the desk with his fine, Zeus-like flipper.
Dottie did as she was told. "I'm not sure about this, Headmaster Ruskin."
"I think first we need to get you out of this too-tight corset." Ruskin's deleterious digits unloosed the first button. Then his heinous hand moved down to the next.
"Oh my," swooned the darling Dottie, dribbling down into delirium. Ruskin's fingers touched the tip of her neck, and the darts of desire drove deep into Dottie's diaphanous dressing gown. "Oh my, Headmaster Ruskin."
"Call me Al."
Just then, there was a thunderous tattoo on the office door.
"Oh my!" exclaimed Dottie.
Ruskin sat up and glared at the door. "What in the Sam Hell is that?" bellowed the love-bloated blowhard.
"It's Biff, the scrivener repairman! I've come to sharpen your quills!" rang a strong, manly voice.
"I bet he has!" leered Ruskin, the lecherous lothario.
"Whatever shall we do?" asked delectable Dottie as she dangled her draping decolletage in front of her dastardly deflowerer.
There was a long moment of painful, delicious waiting, as the two sat on the mahogony desk, the throbbing of its African heritage thundering just below their loins. They could feel the ghosts of the Serengeti -- elephants tearing apart trees, lions tearing apart elephants, great herds of zebras thundering, thundering, dust kicking up in clouds behind their booming equine hooves, the sun low, the native women topless and dancing to the Amazonian drums of Gaia's desire. The room seemed filled with the fetid mists of fecundity -- of the time before time -- or possibly even a little before that. Dottie trembled. Ruskin leered.
"Come in!" they sang together.
*** What's next for the bawdy Boston barrister and bestial brephotrophi? Find out next week!
9.01.2006
More Fall Events
This from the Workshop web site:
Reading Schedule - FALL 2006
Tuesday, September 12
Zadie Smith (interviewed by Robert Hass) Fiction
7:30 p.m. Englert Theater
(University Lecture Committee)
Thursday, September 21
T. C. Boyle Fiction
7:30 p.m. 2nd Floor Ballroom, IMU
(UI Center for Human Rights)
And a bunch of other people coming this fall, including Nell Freudenberger, Denis Johnson, Michael Chabon, Heidi Julavits, Jane Hamilton, Francine Prose, and Frank McCourt, among many others. (Maybe I'll be able to revist our 'oh, shit' punctuation conversation from August 2003!)
Reading Schedule - FALL 2006
Tuesday, September 12
Zadie Smith (interviewed by Robert Hass) Fiction
7:30 p.m. Englert Theater
(University Lecture Committee)
Thursday, September 21
T. C. Boyle Fiction
7:30 p.m. 2nd Floor Ballroom, IMU
(UI Center for Human Rights)
And a bunch of other people coming this fall, including Nell Freudenberger, Denis Johnson, Michael Chabon, Heidi Julavits, Jane Hamilton, Francine Prose, and Frank McCourt, among many others. (Maybe I'll be able to revist our 'oh, shit' punctuation conversation from August 2003!)
Iowa City Arts: September
Grendel has asked me to join you blogging lot and I accepted willingly. At the beginning of each month, I'll post a list of events that grab my eye or pique my interest or shine my shoes--pick your metaphor. Mostly, I'll be pulling from here, here, and here. It's not like I possess some magic divining radar that tells me what's coming up the rest of you couldn't gather on your own. In fact, many of you are far more plugged-in to the university, especially, than I am. It just seems like it would be good to have a placeholder, a one-stop shop for upcoming events in Iowa City.
September Lectures
Hit up the comments for anything I've missed. See you back here October 1. Until then, I'm over at Creekside Review. Stop by.
September Lectures
- Friday, 9.1.06, 4 p.m - Marilynne Robinson, "Beauty." 4 p.m. in the newly completed Frank Conroy Reading Room, the Dey House. This is part of the Writers' Workshop Lecture Series begun last year. If past lectures are any indication, you might want to get to this one early.
- Friday, 9.8.06, noon, - Ken Bugul from Senegal, Manju Sarkar from Bangladesh and Jagath Kumarasinghe from Sri Lanka, all writers in the International Writing Program, will sit on a panel at the Iowa City Pubic Library titled "Islam and We." Press release here. Check here for regular IWP lectures, readings, and presentations at the ICPL. (Note: there's some discrepancies in dates between the press release and the IWP events page. Contact the ICPL for accurate info.)
- Thursday, 9.14.06, 5 p.m. - David Carrier, art critic and historian, Room 116, Art Building West on the UI campus.
- Thursday, 9.7.06, 7:30 - A screening of The Phantom of the Opera will be accompanied by the Alloy Ochrestra in Hancher Auditorium. $28-proceeds to benefit the Bijou Theater, a worthy cause. Follow the link for ticket info.
- Friday, 9.9, through Wednesday, 9.13 - Sydney Pollack's documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry; Russian Dolls, the sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole; and rocker Nick Cave's writing/directing debut The Proposition. Links for showtimes.
- Friday, 9.15, through Thursday, 9.21, - Taiwanese drama Three Times, Ed Norton and Evan Rachel Wood in Down in the Valley. Links for showtimes.
- Friday, 9.22, through Thursday, 9.28 - Get your outrage on: The War Tapes and Road to Guantanamo. Also showing that week as part of the Classics series, Graham Greene's Fallen Idol. Link to pdf for showtimes and descriptions.
- Tuesday, 9.5, 7 p.m. - Mary Gaitskill
- Tuesday, 9.12, 7 p.m. - Tom Lutz
- Wednesday, 9.13, 7 p.m. - Wave Poetry Bus, a 50-city tour of poets featuring Anthony McCann, Cole Swenson, Mimi Khalvati, and others.
- Monday, 9.18, 7 p.m. - Sharon Weinberger
- Tuesday, 9.19, 7 p.m. - Jay Hopler
- Wednesday, 9.20, 7 p.m. - Brian Morton
- Monday, 9.25, 7 p.m. - Tom Drury
- Tuesday, 9.26, 7 p.m. - David Hamilton
- Wednesday, 9.27 7 p.m. - David Treuer
Hit up the comments for anything I've missed. See you back here October 1. Until then, I'm over at Creekside Review. Stop by.
South Coast Journal, September 1
WASHINGTON -- President Bush announced today that China has agreed to cede over the majority of its eastern territory to be incorporated into the new, free, strip-tease-loving county of Exxotexabeepeeaville.
"This is a great day for freedom, and a great day for America! Through diplomacy, we have avoided escalating the striptease crisis into a war," said President Bush.
Government insiders report that a temporary government and drilling equipment are already on their way to the region.
Pastiegate, as the crisis has been referred to in the media, began when China started a policy of cracking down on traditional striptease at Chinese funerals.
Economists saw in today’s announcement more reasons for the Federal Reserve to leave short-term interest rates unchanged again when its policy committee meets on Sept. 20.
“With the new creation of the oil-rich land of Exxotexabeepeeaville, there is no reason to suspect that the Fed will do anything other than keep rates on hold at 5.25 percent again,” wrote Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist for Capital Economics.
The President was clearly thrilled with the announcement. "When I called the King of China yesterday, I said, "This is George -- we need to do something about striptease! He agreed. And we reached an agreement. This is about the freedom to be free and free your boobies or the boobies of those you love as you see fit. Laura, get over here!" said the President during his press conference.
The Chinese Ambassador had little comment. "Wait. Who called? I did what now?"
President Bush said, "This was not about economics! This is not about oil! This is not about my friends and their wonderful, wonderful mutual funds and yachts full of drugs and girls. This is about the right of even godless bastards like the Chinese to send off their dead as they see fit, as long as it is done heterosexually and in a Christian manner!"
Stocks gained on the news, with prices moving up slightly in early trading today.
"This is a great day for freedom, and a great day for America! Through diplomacy, we have avoided escalating the striptease crisis into a war," said President Bush.
Government insiders report that a temporary government and drilling equipment are already on their way to the region.
Pastiegate, as the crisis has been referred to in the media, began when China started a policy of cracking down on traditional striptease at Chinese funerals.
Economists saw in today’s announcement more reasons for the Federal Reserve to leave short-term interest rates unchanged again when its policy committee meets on Sept. 20.
“With the new creation of the oil-rich land of Exxotexabeepeeaville, there is no reason to suspect that the Fed will do anything other than keep rates on hold at 5.25 percent again,” wrote Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist for Capital Economics.
The President was clearly thrilled with the announcement. "When I called the King of China yesterday, I said, "This is George -- we need to do something about striptease! He agreed. And we reached an agreement. This is about the freedom to be free and free your boobies or the boobies of those you love as you see fit. Laura, get over here!" said the President during his press conference.
The Chinese Ambassador had little comment. "Wait. Who called? I did what now?"
President Bush said, "This was not about economics! This is not about oil! This is not about my friends and their wonderful, wonderful mutual funds and yachts full of drugs and girls. This is about the right of even godless bastards like the Chinese to send off their dead as they see fit, as long as it is done heterosexually and in a Christian manner!"
Stocks gained on the news, with prices moving up slightly in early trading today.
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