Prince Rainier III of Monaco has died. In keeping with Uncle Jazzbeau’s recent surfeit of obituaries, I blog this.
What a busy week. On Thursday, I finally caught up with my friend Chris Golde who’s been back in the Bay Area now from the University of Wisconsin Madison, for more than a year and working at the Carnegie Foundation. We met up in Mountain View for dinner at Café Yulong, an excellent Chinese restaurant, though we did bump into each other at Book Buyers first, since we both showed up terminally unhiply early. Upon entering the restaurant, Chris was greated like a long lost relative by owner Miya Pei, and two complementary glasses of wine arrived shortly after the Tsingtaos we ordered. We had some delicious Shanghai steamed dumplings, some great housemade noodles, and a nice prawn dish. The conversation swerved all over the place, and we took turns expounding so the other could scarf. An interesting and tasty dessert arrived without our ordering it, another gift from the Pei family. It was a kind of pancake made of sticky rice and apples in a sweetish syrup. We could just barely finish it, and when conversation ground to a halt, we paid and left.
Well, the blogging lacks or lags. It’s been a busy week or so since the last entries. Met up with two cyberpals, one Kalleh from the Wordcraft discussion board and the other fellow blogger MrBaliHai from the Eye of the Goof. Kalleh was in San Francisco for a conference, and we spent a pleasant Sunday at the SFMOMA enjoying art, trying a couple of cask-conditioned ales at two pubs out in the Haight (Toronado and Magnolia Pub & Brewery), and eating dinner at a grand Catalan Bistro, B44, in the Euro-chic Belden Place (where two other fabulous restaurants, Cafe Bastille and Tiramisu, co-exist). MrBaliHai was in the Bay Area teaching an IT class down in Mountain View near where I’m currently finishing up a contract (in Menlo Park), and yesterday evening we headed on over to La Bodeguita del Medio in Palo Alto for some mojitos and Cuban food.
Meanwhile, Melville’s Le Cercle rouge languishes at home next to the DVD player awaiting its consumption.
Years ago when we first bought our house, we decided to convert an odd little workroom off of the garage and the laundry room into a wine cellar. We’d sheetrocked it and put some nice tiles down on the floor, but at some point back when the economy was going strong and there wasn’t a batch of unbaked hooligans in charge of the country, work on the wine cellar slowed and it quickly accumulated a bunch of boxed odds and ends. Well, we’ve decided to clean it out and put in the wine racks and finish installing the lights, &c. So, with the temperature crossing on over into the hundreds, I started to move boxes of books out. I found a bunch of LPs and some 5.25 inch diskettes, along with some ancient Broderbund software. No black widow spiders, yet.
Last night we watched a documentary called Derrida. It was an enjoyable 90 minutes, but revealed precious little about the philosophy or the man behind it. Now I know that his wife calls him Jackie, and that he butters a crumpet quite methodically. His brother, René, has a funny moment staring into the camera and musing on just where does his brother come up with all that thinking he puts in his books. The director, Amy Ziering Kofman, displays one of the worst American accents that I’ve heard since high school French class when asking her purposefully banal questions. I liked her voiced over excerpts from his texts and think the film would have worked without the questions. At one point, it does promise to cross over into the surreal when a British interviewer asks Derrida about Seinfeld. He stares at her unblinkingly. “Deconstruction, as I understand it, does not produce any sitcoms,” he says. "Do your homework and read.” Later in his library cum study, the film crew comes across some Ann Rice paperbacks. “Somebody gave them to me when I was researching vampirism. No, I've never read them.” As the camera pans away from him putting the books back up on the shelf, the audience sees some toys, Pampers disposable diapers, and a little temporary bed. Derrida’s granddaughter has been to visit.
Not much to report these days. Same old cycle of work-home-rinse-repeat. Been watching more DVDs thanks to Netflix. So far we’re watching our money’s worth, but we still stop in to the mom & pop video store nearby for spur of the moment, just-released Hollywood trash. Finally caught the first two seasons of Black Adder. Liked this character better than Mr Bean. Saw von Trier’s Dogville and enjoyed it in an annoyed sort of way. I think that Kafka did a better job of describing an America he never visited. Not sure what to make of von Trier’s well-publicized fear of flying. And he seems to be off his Dogme 95 oath of purity. Not that he did much besides sign the manifesto. These publicity stunts, cf. Ebert-Gallo hissing-spitting match at Cannes, are beginning to exhaust me. (Though, they did kiss and make nice.)
I’ve been spending less time writing entries for this blog, and more time frittering time away on two or three word-oriented boards:
Quicker turn-around and no spicy ham product in the commentary. The end of blogging as I know it? Hardly. On the other hand, yesterday I heard blogs mentioned on the CBC. I hear they have electricity up in the Great White North, too, eh?
1. Was the film, on which my GGU co-worker Jim Bowlin worked, before he moved to Arizona, and which was directed by local independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, the unfinished I Am a Sex Addict or was it another flick? [via Fried Society via Language Log] 2. Which came first: the goose-egg or the foie gras? 3. [via Filmbrain] A nice Japanese take on the Tokyo film scene, in international English. 4. TBD. 5. The first steps towards democracy?
Years ago, there used to be a sign on 880 around Hayward that simply read stop casting porosity in big block letters. Something to do with casting metal, I always assumed. I wonder what became of it? I don’t remember seeing it for over a decade now.
Well, the Fourth was OK, except for the massive spicy pork product that somebody hammered the commentary with. Hundreds of unsolicited advertisements posing as comments. Banal huzzahs and kudos all linked back to some registered-in-Russia website. Coming in from different IP addresses every couple of seconds. A sign of the future or a blip on the boil-lumped neck of the world-wide web? Sigh.
So Reagan died, and it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead. Since when? Somebody on NPR suggested that Ronnie was the best US president of the twentieth century. Say what? Say Contragate. Just another blowing of a hot, ill wind from the so-called Liberal Media. Disclosure: I met RWR in Chinatown, SF, when he was running for governor of California. Even at the tender age of nine, I did not believe anything that issued forth from the “Great Communicator”.
A slow week of blogging coming soon ...
Thanks to Laura over at Limon, I read this funny story of a man [Vincent Eaton] and his tapeworm. I learned that tapeworms are called ver solitaire in French, and it distracted my mind from the American horrors over in Iraq for a minute or three.
His bright rays bear him up aloft, the God who knoweth all that lives,
Surya, that all may look on him.The constellations pass away, like thieves, together with their beams,
Before the all-beholding Sun.His herald rays are seen afar refulgent o’er the world of men,
Like flames of fire that burn and blaze.Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya, maker of the light,
Illuming all the radiant realm.Thou goest to the hosts of Gods, thou comest hither to mankind,
Hither all light to be beheld.With that same eye of thine wherewith thou lookest brilliant Varuna,
Upon the busy race of men,Traversing sky and wide mid-air, thou metest with thy beams our days,
Sun, seeing all things that have birth.Seven Bay Steeds harnessed to thy car bear thee, O thou farseeing One,
God, Surya, with the radiant hair.Surya hath yoked the pure bright Seven, the daughters of the car; with these,
His own dear team, he goeth forth.Looking upon the loftier light above the darkness we have come
To Surya, God among the Gods, the light that is most excellent.Rising this day, O rich in friends, ascending to the loftier heaven,
Surya remove my heart’s disease, take from me this my yellow hue.To parrots and to starlings let us give away my yellowness,
Or this my yellowness let us transfer to Haritala trees.With all his conquering vigour this Aditya hath gone up on high,
Giving my foe into mine hand: let me not be my foeman’s prey.[Rigveda I.50, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith]
A week’s worth of non-blogging. No excuses. Watched some movies: Fog of War (with Ian and Kari), Lucía, Lucía (known in Mexico as La Hija del Canibal), and In the Cut. Errol Morris’ interview with Robert McNamara explicates eleven lessons about war. Hija is a surreal little neo-new-wavish mystery. Jane Campion’s movie is a taut erotic murder mystery thriller. At about the same time as I was asking rhetorically whether Harvey Keitel’s manhood would be on display, we were treated to an erect membrum virile being fellated.
All in a day’s brooding.
Meanwhile, the unsolicited email is outta control. Worms keep coming COD and anti-virus software keeps me busy and informed. All the while thinking upon:
Nullo ergo tempore non feceras aliquid, quia ipsum tempus tu feceras. et nulla tempora tibi coæterna sunt, quia tu permanes; at illa si permanerent, non essent tempora. quid est enim tempus? quis hoc facile breviterque explicaverit? quis hoc ad verbum de illo proferendum vel cogitatione comprehenderit? quid autem familiarius et notius in loquendo conmemoramus quam tempus? et intellegimus utique, cum id loquimur, intellegimus etiam, cum alio loquente id audimus. quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quærat, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio: fidenter tamen dico scire me, quod, si nihil praeteriret, non esset præteritum tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, et si nihil esset, non esset præsens tempus. duo ergo illa tempora, praeteritum et futurum, quomodo sunt, quando et præteritum iam non est et futurum nondum est? præsens autem si semper esset praesens nec in præteritum transiret, non iam esset tempus, sed æternitas. si ergo præsens, ut tempus sit, ideo fit, quia in præteritum transit, quomodo et hoc esse dicimus, cui causa, ut sit, illa est, quia non erit, ut scilicet non vere dicamus tempus esse, nisi quia tendit non esse.
[Augustinus, Confessiones]
All that and lusting after his mother, too.
1. USan cultural assumptions in computing? Continued in computing assumptions from the US of A. [via the C2 Wiki] 2. Barely heard on NPR last week: the publisher / owner of Unità was describing Berlusconi—in English—as mediatic. I thought I heard idiotic, but then it dawned on me that it must have been mediatic a back-formation from Italian mediatico. And Google cinched it. 3. [Intentionally left blank.]
1. Latin is for breaking up. [via NerdSlut via Mad Latinist at 01/07/04 who got it from Sonjaaa the lesbian language geek] 2. Deasil is sunwards as withershins is sinistrovert. 3. All hail Gaeltacht!
1. Du langage français bizarre hermaphrodite, / De quel genre te faire, équivoque maudite, / Ou maudit? [Boileau, Sur l’Équivoque, via Ad Usum Delphinorum] 2. “For the first time in my life, I felt shame.” [Ms. Mary T. Thompkins Freeman, niece of the late Strom Thurmond, quoted in a New York Times article, via Crooked Timber.] 3. Ein Hündchen wird gesucht, das weder murrt noch beißt, / zerbrochne Gläser frißt und Diamanten scheißt. [Goethe, vaya con Google.]
“A little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese (= pieni pala leipää ilman juustoa) on sirkku kertonut englantilaiselle ja zu-zu-zu-zu-zu-zu-früh (= liian-liian-liian-liian-liian-liian-varhain) varoittaa huolestunut saksalainen yksilö pohjoiseen kiirehtiviä muuttolintuja.” [©1991 Harri Viitanen via FMIC Finnish Music Information] “yellow-(h)ammer. It cannot be said with safety either that the h is due to ignorant assimilation by popular etymology to hammer, or that the absence of h is mere h-dropping. Each form has its etymological theory on its side, and OED says that both forms ‘are historically justifiable’. The only reason for resisting the prevalent h is thus removed.” [Fowler’, 2nd edition, p.723.] Emberiza citrinella. (We had kissed beneath the tress, / And then we heard again / The yellowhammer say, quite plain / “A little bit of bread and no cheese!” [Anonymous & Liza Lehmann Bird Songs Cycle]) A bunting.
How balloons are made. And what they're for. "Professor Twist could not but smile." Translating W.'s Tractatus into Basic English. And the Gricean meaning? Crocodilians untie. Juxtaposing hucksters.
I've missed more than a few day's worth of entries. It's almost a trend. Anyway, here's a short one on something that the web does best: the Dark Side of the Rainbow. DSOTR has been around for quite a while. It's a fun amalgam of pop, folk, and psychedelia. The idea is you play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album (or CD) to the first 40 minutes or so of the Wizard of Oz. I remember synching up The Ten Commandments with Jesus Christ Superstar in my misspent youth. Nothing much came of it, but it was a fun way to kill a few hours. Sometimes the commercials seemed more in synch with the rock opera than the movie starring our favorite NRA president.
"Grausamkeit ist das Heilmittel des verletzten Stolzes." [Nietzsche. Nachlass Fragmente Herbst 1881, 12.217] "Cruelty is the cure for wounded pride." When I lived in Bonn, my apartment was in a building just around the corner from where the Burschenschaft Frankonia, to which Nietzsche belonged
"Genua, dieser entfärbte Süden." [Nietzsche. Nachlass Fragmente Herbst 1881, 12.3] This is from the same notebook that Nietzsche kept in Italy that contains the famous phrase, "ich habe meinen Regenschirm vergessen," that Derrida turned into a short book, Eperons , that I kept thinking of while reading Wittgenstein's Poker. "Genoa, this blanched south."
One thing I've been procrastinating on lately, is playing around with the CSS stylesheet for this blog. Ian, over at Desiderata, beat me to it. (Looks good, too.) I've never liked the column of archives, blogrolling, and stuff over on the right because when the entries become too short, the columns expands leftwards at the bottom. So, as a stopgap measure, I'm going to use one of the other stylesheets over at Movable Type that simply moves the column over to the left, and has even less color than the default stylesheet.
Well, it's happened again. Over the past couple of entries I've typed before thinking or didn't think while typing or some such. Anyway, the result has been that I've typed things that were contradictory to the gist of my argument. Oh, well. I've already blamed the heat and the times, but now I suppose I should just blame myself. When I first started blogging, I was quite careful about editing my entries before finally posting them, but lately … I just don't know. And now a bunch of my favorite blogs are going or have gone on vacation. Well, this should allow me more time to edit.