40 Days of Lent: Day Fifteen

Our Wonderful Bodies!







The above images come from a schoolroom biology presentation on rollers that hangs next to my computer. I have no idea what parts of the body are supposed to be depicted, but it looks like biological functions as drawn by Bosch. I bought it a few years ago from a second hand store on Houston Street. I had seen it, loved it, but then proceeded to some art galleries in Soho and Chelsea. When I realized that nothing in the galleries was as fascinating as this biological presentation, I worried that I had missed my chance and couldn't get back to the shop fast enough.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fourteen

In Today's Moron News, This Just In...

NY man claims NJ psychic defrauded him of $250,000
Mon Mar 9, 9:06 pm ET

MORRISTOWN, N.J. – A New York man is suing a New Jersey psychic, claiming she defrauded him of nearly $250,000 he paid her to craft a golden statue that was supposed to ward off negativity. Charles Silveira, 38, of Seaford, Long Island, claims he never received the statue.

On Monday, he filed suit in New Jersey Superior Court in Morristown seeking to recover the money from 32-year-old Ava Miller of Mendham. Silveira also wants Miller removed from a $700,000 home he bought for her last year.

The lawsuit claims that Silveira met Miller online in 2007, and that he made several large cash payments to her over a period of several months.

A telephone listed for Miller's Mendham address rang unanswered Monday night. Reached earlier Monday by the Daily Record of Morristown, she declined comment.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirteen

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

So because I was a young man in the late 1980s who liked comics and thought he was smart, I went to see Watchmen this past weekend. For those who don’t know, Watchmen is based on a groundbreaking 12 issue comic book series that takes as its central thesis that if superheroes existed in the real world, they wouldn’t be able to effect any significant positive change because, being human, they would have emotional, psychological, sexual and political problems just like everyone else.

The movie isn’t the disaster that some film adaptations are, but its best moments come directly from the comic. The film has a ponderousness, a heaviness of tone, that the comic did not have. There is no pleasure in watching the movie, or rather, the only pleasure comes when it recalls favorite parts of the comic. But despite material that ranged from melancholy to nihilistic, reading the comic was always a pleasure. Much of this comes from the cleverness of writer Alan Moore’s words, but mostly this pleasure comes from watching how words interact, support, subvert or contradict the images with which they share a panel. Watchmen was, to use a word that would become a cliche a decade after its publication, "interactive" in a way unlike any other comic or media of its time. Loaded with repeating images and words, the reader had to make connections between scenes or bits of dialogue, like solving a puzzle. The driving plot was a murder mystery, and the reader’s gathering of clues and noticing things echoed what the characters were doing. Based on lurid pulps and pushing comic book stereotypes to the point of no return, it was fun: that’s why I loaned my issues and gave copies of the book to so many people. The movie, whatever its merits, is not a fun experience.

I’ve become more interested lately in how the human brain works, how it processes different kinds of information. What parts of the brain does music stimulate? Why do you feel different after two hours of reading as opposed to two hours of watching television? Does representational work make us think differently than abstract? I was once discussing this in a bar with a neurologist (really!) and he said that the popular “right brain/left brain” model was an oversimplification and inaccurate. So while I’d like to avoid being dualistic, there does seem to be a fundamental divide between how we “read” words versus images. This would make comics an important form to study, but most comics aren’t as conscious as Watchmen of the dance between words and pictures. As mentioned before, they vary between harmony, opposition, ironic comment, and surprising coincidence. You draw meaning from the words and pictures: sometimes in synthesis, but not always. It was, if not new, then at least a subtly different, way of thinking.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twelve

It's my favorite scene from Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ, a movie that, surprisingly, I liked, perhaps because I saw it in terms of the traditional passion play rather than anything contemporary. My favorite scene exists as its own little mystery. Jesus the carpenter shows His mother His new innovation. The Son of God has created the first kitchen dining set: a table and long legged chairs so that you no longer have to sit or kneel on the ground to eat. Mary slowly, cautiously sits in one of the chairs, as if it is going to collapse beneath her. Soon she is excited about Jesus' new idea, which eventually gets forgotten in the course of later events. On the way to His death, Christ is mocked as "The King of the Jews" not "Inventor of Really Tall Chairs."

It's a funny scene in and of itself and one of the few moments of levity in the film. I'm not entirely sure what it it trying to say, except perhaps that Jesus of Nazareth would have changed the world even if he hadn't be divine? Was saving humanity's lower backs as well as their souls part of His mission? A nice kitchen set is a gift from God? Or that perhaps certain ideas get lost in the sweep of historical events and because the world is not ready for them, only to re-emerge when the people are ready? But this last interpretation is close to Gnostic teaching. Is Gibson parodying Gnostic ideas, saying that forgotten or lost knowledge is no more significant than a comfy place to park your *ss?

40 Days of Lent: Day Eleven

01:44 SPY: The Funny Years
Edited by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

My first book report this year fits in with the Days of Lent, given that those who worked at SPY magazine seemed motivated by the Deadly Sins of Pride and Envy.

I can remember searching for the first issue of Spy after reading an Associated Press article about a sharp new satiric magazine. It sounded like everything I was looking for. Unfortunately, I was looking in the wrong place: Wilkes-Barre, PA, to be exact, where I was living at the time. We might have gotten Associated Press articles, sure, but sophisticated “New York Monthlies?” No way.

As related in the combination memoir/anthology SPY: The Funny Years, I wasn’t alone on either count. People who lived in New York had trouble finding early issues, and there were others across the nation who were excited about a monthly satire magazine. The first issue I saw was April 1988, The “Nice” Issue. I picked it up at a stopover in Chicago while taking the train across the country and was quickly initiated. Things that hadn’t mattered to me (like cover boy Donald Trump) now did, once I learned of their inherent odiousness through SPY’s clever, nasty articles. The nastiness became more apparent (actually, inescapable) later, but what initially impressed me was how much fun the magazine was to read. The crazy charts, the articles in tiny print that ran alongside the margins, columns that gave the inside scoop about The New York Times or professional critics. There seemed to be so much in that issue, yet I didn’t feel sated after I had read, and re-read, everything it contained. Just the opposite, in fact.

And so it seemed with the issues that followed. Looking at the covers reproduced on The Funny Years’ endpapers, I can remember where I was when I first saw the 1988-89 issues. June ‘88, with Graham Chapman as a “coaster:” I flipped through it at Cody’s Books in Berkeley before buying. March ’89, with a smug Chevy Chase representing the Irony Epidemic: couldn’t wait for my break, kept flipping through the issue while at work. I didn’t have much money when I lived in California – I was on the macaroni and cheese diet most of the time – but I always bought SPY magazine. I can remember at the time thinking that, as good as the magazine was, it wasn’t quite “there” yet. It was a good magazine (very good, I suppose) but not great. The issues were getting better and better but it hadn’t peaked, which I looked forward to with anticipation.

That peak never really came. Looking back, you can choose a run of issues and say that it was the magazine at its best, but examine those issues and a sense of repetition, a formula, becomes apparent and annoying. I think this was one of the magazine’s fatal flaws. Magazines have a house style and a consistent tone, true, but SPY, after fairly quickly finding its voice, didn’t do anything but repeat, but with diminishing returns. Just as every young man eventually has an epiphany and realizes that every issue of Mad magazine is basically the same, so it was with SPY. The other fatal flaw was not just the repetition but also the tone itself. Being mean can be cathartic and liberating, for a while, but consistent meanness becomes tiresome, and as a tool for satire, ineffective because it eliminates point of view. If everything is corrupt, why should anyone care about the special loathsomeness of Donald Trump?

The memoir section of The Funny Years is obviously for fans of the magazine*. Its insights run along the lines of “we had fun – you shoulda been there!” The editors and writers come across as clever and sensible people who, you know, sat at their desks and worked. More interesting is how the magazine was always a shoestring operation given that each issue “seemed” rich in that 1980s kinda way. It’s disappointing that so little from the actual magazine is reprinted. Pages are reprinted in their entirety to give a sense of the interplay of graphics and text that was a hallmark of the magazine, but unfortunately, at a smaller than original size, which makes reading more of an effort. Even though I have all my old issues, I was disappointed that most of what’s reprinted are fragments rather than entire articles. There are pieces that justify the magazine’s reputation: I was amazed at how good the “Great Expectations” essay written by Kurt Andersen was. The quality of the writing, dense yet paced to zip along, is rarely found in magazines anymore. An article about “Yuppie Porn” (making and marketing mundane items like knives and telephones as luxury goods) makes the distinction: “…pornography – the objectification of bodies…[whereas] yuppie pornography – the objectification of objects.” You can substitute “materialism” for “yuppie pornography” but I think the idea of “objectification of objects” is just about perfect.



*Are there still fans of the magazine? I picked up my copy of this book for $2.99 at the bargain table at Borders. I can't imagine paying the list prices of $39.95.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Ten

There's an older man in our office lobby who recently had a stroke. He's surrounded by some younger businessmen respectfully gathered around him while he sits in a comfortable chair and talks. He speaks clearly though slowly, but because he takes his time, you can follow the pattern of his thoughts as he begins a sentence, veers off to make a dirty pun, which reminds him of something from his youth in Brooklyn, which he then relates to the ongoing current stock market panic. It's not much different from how other minds work, but because the stroke has slowed his thoughts to a speed at which he can express them and he's not being interrupted by those listening to him, I'm able to watch a slowed-down model of how consciousness works.

I don't want it to end, especially since he what he says is as interesting as how he says it, but his meeting is starting so now he must take baby steps into our conference room and close the door.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Nine

The Dr. Seuss Bible

I was going to write about LSD today, but then I read on my friend Carol's blog that Monday was Dr. Seuss' 105th birthday. So, in sort of honor of Dr. Seuss, one of my favorite bit of parody: The Dr. Seuss Bible by The Kids In The Hall.

One day God said
"This is what I will do
I'll send down my Son
I'll send him to you
To clear up this humpity
Bumpity hulabaloo

"His name will be Christ
And he'll never wear shoes
And his pals will all call Him
the King of the Jews!"

He didn't come in a plane
He didn't come in a jeep
He didn't come in the pouch
Of a high jumping voveep

He rode on the back of a black sasatoo
Which is the blackiest creature
You ever could view

He rode to Jerusalem
Home of the grumpity Jews
Where false prophets are worshiped
Some even in two's

There was Murrary Von Mer
And Genghis Vo Vooze
The one you could worship
By taking a snooze

Christ spoke from a mound
Which is a pile of ground
And people gathered around
Without making a sound
And thus he spake

"Sin in socks
Socks full of sin
How do we quiet this
Jehoviadin din?

"Do unto others as
They do unto you"
That includes you,
Young Timothy Foo

One pharisee said to another he knew
"What do we do with this upitty jew?"
"We can wash him in wine
And make him all clean
And into Sam Zittle's
Crucifixion Machine"

Twirl the gawhril
And relase the gavlease
And in go the nails
As fast as you please!

And it is said that He
Said as he bled:

"Forgive them Father
For they know not what they do

"For they walk through this life
In toe crampity shoes."

Do you?

Amen.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Eight

Bad Deeds

Below is an article from today's New York Times about debt collectors manipulating the next of kin to pay their deceased family member's debts. Legally, you are not responsible for the debts of a deceased loved one; hence, the heinous manipulation. Originally, I was going to include my mortified reactions, but then I found that all I was doing was typing "Oh my God" and "there's got to be a special circle in Hell" and "AAAAAAAAAAgh!" over and over.

--------------------------------

You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector
By DAVID STREITFELD

MINNEAPOLIS — The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.

Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.

The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.

“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.

Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.

Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.

New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”

“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.

For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies could go after any property inherited from the deceased.

But sentiment also plays a large role, the agencies say. Some relatives are loyal to the credit card or bank in question. Some feel a strong sense of morality, that all debts should be paid. Most of all, people feel they are honoring the wishes of their loved ones.

“In times of illness and death, the hierarchy of debts is adjusted,” said Michael Ginsberg of Kaulkin Ginsberg, a consulting company to the debt collection industry. “We do our best to make sure our doctor is paid, because we might need him again. And we want the dead to rest easy, knowing their obligations are taken care of.”

Finally, of course, some of those who pay a dead relative’s debts are unaware they may have no legal obligation.

Scott Weltman of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, a Cleveland law firm that performs deceased collections, says that if family members ask, “we definitely tell them” they have no legal obligation to pay. “But is it disclosed upfront — ‘Mr. Smith, you definitely don’t owe the money’? It’s not that blunt.”

DCM Services, which began in 1999 as a law firm, recently acquired clients in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications and health care; DCM says its contracts preclude it from naming them.

The companies “want to protect their brand,” said DCM’s chief executive, Steven Farsht. Despite the delicacy of such collections, he says his 180-employee firm is providing a service to the economy. “The financial services industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and every dollar we collect improves their profitability,” he said.

To listen to even a small sample of DCM’s calls — executives played tapes of 10 of them for a reporter, electronically edited to remove all names — is to reveal the wages of misery, right down to the penny.

A man has left credit card debt of $26,693.77, the legacy of a battle with cancer. A widow says her husband “had no money. He pretty much just had debt.” Asked about an outstanding account of $1,084.86, a woman says the deceased had no property beyond “some tools in the garage” and an 18-year-old Dodge.

Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.

Brenda Edwards, one of DCM’s top collectors, spoke with a woman in New Jersey about her mother’s $544.96 credit card bill.

“She had no will, no finances, nothing,” the daughter said. “Nothing went to probate.” The $200 in the checking account was used for funeral expenses. But the woman also said the family “filed a form with the county,” indicating that perhaps there was a legal estate after all.

“Is anyone in the family in a position to pay this?” Ms. Edwards asked, adding: “I’m not telling you it needs to be paid at all.”

The woman reached a decision. “I will talk to my brothers and sisters and we will pay this,” she said.

Ms. Edwards has a girlish voice that sounds younger than her 29 years. “If you plant a seed and leave on a good note, they’ll call back and pay it,” she said.

DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information, tools and, some day, products. “We will never sell death. But it’s O.K. to provide things that could be helpful to the survivor,” Mr. Farsht said. Death will be the end of one customer relationship but the beginning of another.

Some survivors are surprised, and a few are shocked, that they are hearing from a collector.

Eric Frenchman, an online consultant, said a DCM agent inquired about his late father’s $50 Discover card balance before the bill was even due. Since Mr. Frenchman had been planning to pay it anyway, he emerged from the experience vowing never to get a Discover card himself.

The major deceased-debt firms say such experiences are rare. Adam Cohen, chief executive of Phillips & Cohen Associates of Westampton, N.J., said his team of 300 collectors “are all trained in the five stages of grief.”

If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.

DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.

One widow wrote that a collector “was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.” Saying that money was “so tight” after her husband died, she added: “It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.”

40 Days of Lent: Day Seven

Good Deeds

I'm stuck late at work tonight, helping to straighten out my boss' vacation plans, which begin, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th of this month. I'm thinking about karma, Islam's good deeds, Christian charity, and, of course, being a martyr.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Six

Indulgences Are Back!

Until June 29th of this year, the Vatican is offering indulgences in honor of the 2000th birthday of St. Paul (as opposed to how the Church normally honors St. Paul by having an ambivalent attitude towards women). Unlike the previous indulgences that so upset dreary fussbudget Martin Luther*, you do not have to pay. You simply have to, with sincere heart,

1. make a full confession to a priest (much easier than it was in the days of the Inquisition)

2. pray for the intentions of the pontiff

3. make a pilgrimage to a site dedicated to St. Paul

and you will have some of your time in Purgatory forgiven.

Not a bad deal at all.

_________________________________________
*currently residing in Hell.

40 Days of Lent: Day Five

The Milky Way
Directed by Luis Bunuel

For a number of years, Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel's film The Milky Way was one of his unknown films. People knew Un Chien Andalou, made with Salvador Dali at the beginning of their careers, The Discreet Charm of The Bougeousis, made towards the end and nominated for an Oscar, and sporadic films in between, but there was a whole category of his films that were talked about but seldom seen. These films were considered either lost classics or failures; The Milky Way being one of the latter. All I could knew was that it was about people on a religious pilgrammage and it wasn't as good as the Bunuel films that followed.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the first time that I saw The Milky Way that I loved it. I suppose critics at the time were disappointed that it was a straight-forward depiction of religious argument rather than a mocking of the middle-class. It's a film in which everyone talks about Catholic doctrine the way people in the real world discuss celebrities or sports or the news. It's like the movie was made for me: I find the history of heresy and religious arguments endlessly fascinating. The dialogue consists of much of what goes on inside my head all the time, like the voiceovers of another favorite film of mine The Thin Red Line. For me, the key scene is one in which workers at an expensive restaurant are getting ready for that evening's customers but discuss Christian theology as they do.


Bunuel's characters discuss religion the same way Godard's go on endlessly about politics. Reminding the viewer of the number of passionate arguments in the history of religion and of the many now heretical ideas cast out in the name of forming a universal faith, we see how religion has never been a fixed thing, but subject to the arguments of man.


In addition to being an interesting history of heresy, The Milky Way can also be seen as the autobiographical musings of an old surrealist. "Do you want to know why I'm so fascinated with how the unexpected and the supernatural intrude on our mundane lives? Well, I was brought up to believe in a malleable logic that could explained supernatural events." Bunuel's deadpan film style doesn't hold religious arguments up for ridicule: there's something sad, rather than satiric, about characters earnestly arguing about things that can never be proven. The best example of this is the scene where two 18th century noblemen have a duel because they disagree about the notion of free will. Seems funny, but people really did die over such arguments.

40 Days of Lent: Day Four

What? I Believe?

In her comments on yesterday's post, Carol asked: "Um, do you even believe in purgatory?"

So I began thinking about what I believe*, which inevitably reminds me of an old routine by Steve Martin ("I believe in 8 of the 10 commandments"), J. G. Ballard's surrealist manifesto ("the lunacy of flowers...the gentleness of the surgeon's knife"), or the misanthropic rant unleashed by the main character in The Singing Detective ("I believe...not properly labeling fatal poisons"). But do I believe in Purgatory?

No. Or Heaven or Hell, for that matter.

If there is an afterlife, and the fact that I'm willing to even begin this sentence with an "if' separates me from those who are of the "you die, you end, that's that" school, I suspect it echoes this life in that it is an on-going growth process. We come into this life and don't know anything -- infants are not very bright -- but eventually grow, learn and change. It is a fundamental part of our biological, intellectual and (again, this is controversial) spiritual existence. Since life is ongoing change why would the afterlife be stasis? Your place in eternity is going to be determined by, if you're lucky, 80 or 90 years in the physical realm after which, your place is fixed with no hope for movement or improvement? This is too much like a caste system and makes about as much sense.

Instead, I suspect that if any part of an individual continues on after physical death, he/she goes into the next realm as the equivalent of a newborn baby and then has to go through...well, think of it as spiritual diaper training. Just as everyone here has to learn how to not soil themselves, I suspect that if there is a next world, new arrivees are taught by those who have been there a while to do the spiritual equivalent. It is an ongoing learning process, an ongoing growth process, and eventually you evolve into something else.

I believe this view of the afterlife is based on the fact that I like my existence and like learning for its own sake, and would like that process to continue rather than simply end. Purgatory, Hell and even Heaven represent as much of an "end" as "you die, that's that."




______________________________
*Freudian typo (which is a written Freudian slip): Initially, in this sentence "what I believe" was capitalized, but then I decided to make it lower case. While changing the letters, I accidentally typed an "s" instead of a "w" so that it read "shat I believe." I'm sure some of you will agree.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Three

What I Gave Up For Lent This Year

I gave up cursing. I could have/should have given up alcohol, but I already had made plans to visit a friend for drinks, and on Ash Wednesday, no less, so so much for that idea.

How am I doing? Well, okay, although I am aware that I've fallen twice, though each time I was quoting or imaging what someone else might say, so I don't see why their foul language should translate into more days in Purgatory for me.

One of the curses occurred while my friend Clare was telling me about her mother's various dogs. Her mom has a Great Dane, who has learned how to knock on the front door when he wants to be let in. It drives her crazy to answer her front door, only to see the dog standing there wanting to be let in before his time. Even worse, she has begun ignoring knocks at the door, assuming it's the dog, only to find out later that it was either a friend or a deliveryman.

This being Lent, I think the dog who knows how to knock at the door should qualify as a miracle of some sort.

40 Days of Lent: Day Two

Stephen Teaches Sunday School, Motherf***er...

Interesting interview and argument about theology. Best part begins around 4:34.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Philip Zimbardo

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

40 Days Of Lent: Day One

Karma, or Why You Should Forgive People Rather Than Chastise Or Banish Them



Chart depicting Kellogg's reputation dropping from 9th most favorable brand to 83rd after the company ended their contract with Michael Phelps when it was discovered that he smoked marijuana.

Ha ha.

Why, Johnny Can't Read

I’ve had the same New Year’s Resolution for the past two years: take my age and finish that number of books in the calendar year. There were a couple of reasons for this resolution: the most obvious was to force myself to read more, but the second was to have something to consistently write about on this blog. Unfortunately, I failed each goal each year. Perhaps I should have tried this when I was in my twenties; seeing as I’m in my mid-forties, trying to polish off 42 or 43 books in a year is, personally, no easy task.

In 2007, I only finished 28 books. A failing grade, no doubt, but I consoled myself with the fact that I read throughout the year and, better yet, enjoyed a number of books on my list. Any disappointment came from not finding time to post book reports on this site. There were a number of things I was looking forward to discussing, but it seems the time has passed.

If 2007’s report was cloudy with a chance of silver lining, 2008 was a complete washout. Not only did I not finish much that I started (I have 30 pages left in Proust and The Squid. 30 lousy pages! But I haven’t picked it up since November), but looking over what I did read, there’s little that I loved. Perhaps there’s a connection. I’m loath to completely abandon a book. I soldier on with a pigheaded determination to finish what I’ve started, even if I don’t like it. As a teenager, shortly after I began Something Happened by Joseph Heller, a friend told me his father was unable to finish it. In some private act of literary machismo, I was determined to finish the book, inspired perhaps by the fact that my friend’s father was a college English professor. It wasn’t until I finished the book – it took me all summer – that I realized that perhaps my friend’s father was right all along. Something Happened is deliberately repetitious, a statement on the trap the main character finds himself in. I can justify it, but did I have to read all of it?

Apparently yes, and it’s a habit I can’t break. If I begin a book, I have to finish it whether I like it or not. This might be a nice example of commitment, but it also means that some books become blocks. I won’t read something new until the current book is finished and if I don’t like the current book, then I don’t read. The cycle can be as monotonous as the experiences of the main character in Something Happened. O, the irony.

There are other reasons for the sharp decline in number of books I read, and you’re staring at one of them right now: I spend much of my leisure time on the computer or watching television. I don’t feel bad about either of these activities: there are a number of movies or tv shows I want to see (I never random channel surf – the DVR has truly changed how I watch tv and for the better). When I am online, I am reading. But it is a different kind of reading. Text online is closer to magazine-style writing. Easy to comprehend, it consists of facts and, invariably, a heavy dose of attitude. You can read online for a couple of hours, zipping from site to site, only to discover that you’ve retained very little, apart from “this is cool!” or “that sucks!”

So why devote so much time to reading online or watching tv, especially when I have a resolution (which, let’s face it, is like a contract with God) to read so much? Well, I’ve noticed that with visual media (defined here as the computer and tv), my attention is immediately riveted, whereas with literary media (books – comics and magazines are excluded) it takes me a while to settle in to what I am reading. I fidget, I look at the cover for the umpteenth time, I glance at things around the room. It takes time and effort, it’s almost a process, for my attention to be fully pulled by the string of words. But once there, once a book has my attention, I don’t want anything else. Visual media captures my attention more quickly, but the hold is almost never as strong.

I didn’t consciously realize the other reason I wasn’t reading until late in the year. It was simple: I needed glasses. Reading isn’t much of a pleasure when you have to hold a book at arm’s length in order to see, and even then, the words are all soft grey. Something I forgot but instantly recalled was how nice black letters look on a white page. With my glasses on, the text just pops! off the page. It really is a pleasure.

So we’ll see if the third time is the charm. I’ll be 44 this year, so I’m trying to finish and write about 44 books before December 31, 2009. I’m already behind, but at least I’m currently reading (and enjoying) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano and only have 30 pages left in Proust and The Squid.

25 Random Things About Me (In Which I Finally Hop on the Bandwagon)

This list, like most things lately, has to do with facebook. I received a tag from my college friend Sue Starsinic along with her list of 25 Random Things, and before I could even finish my list, there was an anti-list article on Time.com (the backlash) and a pro-list article on Salon (the backlash to the backlash). Everything moves so quickly nowadays

In any case, here's the list for those not on facebook, and a distraction from the fact that I haven't posted anything here in over two months.

1. I’m a Gemini.

2. I dress to the right.

3. I like books (the objects) more than I like reading (the activity).

4. I believe I’m more at peace with chaos than most people…

5. …however, this doesn’t mean that I crave or seek out chaos: I’m not a sociopath.

6. I don’t believe in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. I think Freud was wrong about almost everything.

7. This list is not as random as it should be: it took me several days and a number of drafts to get it right.

8. I like the cool colors: greens, blues, greys. I don’t like warm colors: reds, oranges, yellows.

9. I painted my kitchen an orange-yellow.

10. I lost my taste for Chinese food after my appendix exploded.

11. I love thai food.

12. I like bars, pub culture, and drinking….

13. …but not as much as I used to.

14. I would like to learn to surf before I die.

15. I believe in love.

16. I believe the world is not so bad.

17. I live more in my head than in my body.

18. I’m not graceful or athletic by any stretch of the imagination, but there are times when I surprise myself and others. Rock-climbing, for example.

19. I’m an Anglophile, especially if you expand “anglo” to include all the lands they colonized.

20. I like email. I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the sounds they make, I don’t like talking on them, I don’t like how they interrupt what you’re doing and I don’t like how, after 11:00pm, they’re harbingers of doom.

21. I sometimes cut my own hair. If you saw me, this would not come as any surprise.

22. I’d rather be deaf than blind. Losing music would be a shame, to be sure, but losing literature, the cinema and all the visual arts would be immeasurably worse. Plus deaf people seem to be an insular, loyal community, whereas blind people need help crossing the street and often knock things over.

23. I believe biology trumps everything: it wins out over sociology, individual psychology, economics and spirituality.

24. I will have fries with that.

25. I don’t like games, apart from Monopoly, Clue, and poker.

Today's Unfortunate Choice of Words

From the article "Amsterdam to Close Many Brothels, Marijuana Cafes"

[City council member] Asscher underlined that the city center will remain true to its freewheeling reputation.

"It'll be a place with 200 windows (for prostitutes) and 30 coffee shops, which you can't find anywhere else in the world — very exciting, but also with cultural attractions," he said.

"And you won't have to be embarrassed to say you came."

"Rove planning to ‘name names’ of Bush haters in his new book."

Hanlon. John Michael.

H-A-N (as in "November") L-O-N (another "November").

Just want to make sure you get it right.


(Story below)

Rove planning to ‘name names’ of Bush haters in his new book.»
Karl Rove is reportedly one of the key architects overseeing the “Bush legacy project,” predicting that the President will be remembered as a “far-sighted leader.” In a new interview with Cox News, Rove rails against all the people in America who never “accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush,” saying that he plans to call them out in his new book:

Rove sees a presidency clouded by the way it began.

“There were people who never accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush and acted accordingly,” he said. […]

Also reserved for between the covers of Rove’s book is his checklist of the “great many of the political actors in this town (who) never accepted him as a legitimate president.”

“I’ve got behind-the-scenes episodes that are going to show how unreceiving they were of this man as president of the United States,” Rove said, adding: “I’m going to name names and show examples.”

In the Cox interview, Rove also refused to acknowledge the role of Bush administration officials in various scandals, including the Valerie Plame, instead blaming “Washington partisanship.”

Last Night's Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was back in college, hanging out with college friends. I told them I had been to and seen the future (which was my waking life, my life now) and while it wasn't perfect, it wasn't too bad. I reassured them that even though things wouldn't be what they expected, it wasn't too bad.