A humble request.
I was going to rant about how nobody’s letting In Our Bedroom After the War breathe in the shadow of Set Yourself on Fire, but I have work to do, and really, you all probably knew this already, so instead I’ll just ask this: please, please, please stop saying “postmodern” when all you mean is “metatextual.” It’s so 1984.
More on the behemoth.
Dylan, as ever, says it best. —Meanwhile, Momus is trying to take the piss out of Potter and The Wire at the same time, and for such an intellective jackanapes falls distressingly flat. Announcing to the world that you think the point of a name like Severus Snape is “you don’t have to waste much time working out whether they’re good or evil” is to mistake the set-up for the punchline, and if you require nothing more than a weepy third party’s word to accept that Bubbles must be “the most sympathetic character ever to appear in a TV drama,” well, you’re pretty much doomed to repeat the downfall of Tom Townsend, who never read novels, just good criticism, thus to efficiently garner the thoughts of a critic as well as the novelist.
—Ah, well. Momus is not without his point re: “wholly human,” and at least it’s—wittier? more insightful?—better than Ron Charles’ weary screed about how it’s all not really, you know, reading.
Eight hours and 759 pages later.
Well. That’s done. —Next?
The power of names.
No, Barkley; no. You can cite Juan Cole all you want, but this decade will not be called the zeroes, or the naughties, or the naughts; not even the old-skool aughts. It’s going to be a little more cumbersome: the aught-naughts. As in, “We really ought not to have done that—”
Harry Potter and the Lost Light.
I had no idea. I honestly had no idea. (via)
It’s the little things.
Shouldn’t he be saying “Myanmar”?
O to be in Brooklyn in the Spring!
On May 18th, my older younger sister’s birthday, Rose Thomson, Hanna Fox, and Tim Thomas will all be onstage again in their various separate incarnations, at the Magnetic Field. —Explains all the searches lately for Babe the Blue Ox. (Laura: you gotta go and tell me all about it.)
Count Bérubé’s passage over Piedmont.
You’ve read it elsewhere, but the sinistral contract obligates I mention it, and so: Michael Bérubé renounces blogging exile, joins the gang at Crooked Timber. Hot holy damn.
Liverwurst, Battenburg, Emmenthal, Syllabub, Muscadet—
Throw it away! We need more height! Toss it all over the side!
O Newton, release this apple from its earthly shackles!
Throw it all away, and live to fight another day—
Time to Frenzy.
Distressing news via BlogTown: Reading Frenzy, the amazing zine and comics and independent press emporium that’s been a Portland fixture for 13 years, needs our help. Here’s the message from Chloe Eudaly:
We’re rounding the corner on our 13th year, and while I’m not particularily superstitious, it does seem to be adding up to a rather unlucky phase in our long, illustrious history. A series of unfortunate events, both business and personal, have brought us to a critical juncture and we need your support to see us through.
As a faithful reader, I’m sure you appreciate Reading Frenzy and what we offer to our community of readers and publishers: a rare outlet for independent and alternative media, a hub of local literary activity, and a cozy space for art and literary events. Internationally recognized for our devotion to the small press and zines in particular, we’ve even inspired others to follow suit and open shops in their own towns.
Reading Frenzy is as much a community resource as it is a business, and as such has always depended on the generousity of volunteer staff, a team of supportive professionals who help us for free or cheap, and the occasional fundraiser. We have a couple bigger events in the works, but in the meantime here’s how you can help break the spell:
- Go on a Reading Frenzy shopping spree! Can’t find what you want now? Buy yourself (and a few of your friends) gift certificates!
- Buy a Co-Frenzy membership for $100—you receive a 10% discount for one year, plus a signed/numbered Reading Frenzy/Spiral Bound print by Aaron Renier!
- Have a bright idea for a fundraiser? Bring it on! We’re thinking rock show, spaghetti feed, and book sale—but not at the same time!
Thanks so much for your continued support!
Go. Continue your support. And spread the word!
Miss Aqua; Miss Aquia; Miss Aguia; D’Equi; “Doc”—
Dr. Marie Diana Equi, noted for the commonplace book on my way elsewhere. “Her personal friend and companion is Miss Aqua, a spirited young lady, who says that she will not tamely submit to see Miss Holcomb cheated out of $100 of her salary, and that she will whip O.D. Taylor if it is the last act of her life. The sympathy of the crowd was with the young lady, and if she had horse-whipped the reverend gentleman the fine would have been subscribed within five minutes. Miss Holcomb is a scholarly and highly accomplished young lady, and is held in high estimation in this community. Miss Aqua is very much attached to her, and her friendship amounts to adoration.”
Empathy and usefulness,
or, Innovative design solutions.
“Traditional tools such as pencils or markers may be used to develop graphic design ideas, even when computers are used for finalization.” —And y’all thought Conservapedia was funny.
Is that a 75mm recoilless rifle on your Vespa, or are you happy to see me?
Which is, yes, a Vespa scooter fitted with a 75mm recoilless rifle.
After World War II, there was little money for defense spending while the nations of Europe rebuilt their industry and society. When there was some cash to spend, one had to be creative to stretch it as far as possible. The French probably accomplished the most astounding example of that with the ACMA Troupes Aeról Portées Mle. 56. Deployed with their airborne forces, this was essentially a militarized Vespa scooter outfitted with a 75mm recoilless rifle. Five parachutes would carry the two-man gun crew, weapon, ammunition, and two scooters safely to earth, and the men would load the weapon on one scooter and the ammo on the other, then ride away. More impressively, the recoilless rifle could be fired effectively on the move by the best of the gun crews. Total cost? About $500 for the scooter and the recoilless rifle was war surplus. Were they successful military machines? Well, the French Army deployed about 800 armed scooters in wars conducted in both Algeria and Indochina.
This, for whatever reason, reminded me of this old thread over at Vince Baker’s joint—specifically, this comment:
ROCKING WITH JFC FULLER
There are three things you can do in a fight:
- HURT THE OTHER GUY – how hard can you hit the other guy with your rock/RPG/railgun?
- PROTECT YOURSELF – how hard are you to hit, and how hard a hit can you take?
- MOVE AROUND – how fast can you move, over whatever ground?
The core dilemma: Anything you do to make yourself better at one of these things makes you worse at one or both of the others.
That applies on all scales:
- ”As long as I stay in this ditch, they can’t shoot me! But I can’t shoot back, unless I stand up—which makes it easier for them to shoot me, too—and I can’t move except back and forth in the ditch—unless I get out and run—which makes it easier for them to shoot me and I’ll be moving too fast too aim.”
- ”Men, form a square! Excellent, now Napoleon’s cavalry cannot hope to overrun us. But with men facing all four directions instead of in a line, we can’t concentrate our musket fire against any one target, and if we wanted to march anywhere, we would really move faster in column formation.”
- ”This new tank has impenetrable armor! But that means no engine we can put in it will move it very fast. And if we want to put a bigger gun in it, it’ll be even slower, unless we get rid of some armor….”
- ”Our clan has always been safe in the mountains! If those filthy lowlanders try to attack, we just slaughter them like sheep in the narrow passes! Of course, if we try to attack the lowlanders, they just slaughter us coming out the other end of the passes. And even in a year with little snow, we can barely move warriors from one village to another.”
See how the same iron triangle of tradeoffs repeats itself? The only way out of the dilemma—sometimes!—is higher technology, but even then, once you get the more powerful engine for your tank (or whatever), you just move from your old trade-space to a new, slightly better trade-space.
I suppose because the Mle. 56 is a remarkably unexpected method of squaring this particular iron triangle. But also because I like to imagine the Ilk of Jonah being chased by squads of the dam’ things. —I am, at base, a petty, petty man.
Anyway: into the commonplace book it goes.
The trick is how to find it.
“Jeff Conaway!” I said to myself, stumbling over the name in maybe a Gawker Stalker or something, pegging him by the reference to his Christianity. Now that I have his name, I can go to imdb and scroll down his credits and trust that the name of the show will be self-evident. —I’d forgotten the name of the show, see, and everyone who was in it except the star who was the guy from Grease and later Taxi whose name I could never remember. (Though for whatever reason the whole born-again thing stuck with me.) I don’t even remember the show itself that well, just that it was funny when I was fifteen, and I cared enough about it to hurry back to the hotel room after a swim meet so I could coax the bunny ears into pulling down a relatively snow-free CBS signal. Then they killed it. —And now I learn that most of the episodes were directed by Bill Bixby. Wizards and Warriors. Damn. Everything’s pretty much in this intertubes thing somewhere, isn’t it? (Except, y’know, the actual episodes.)
I forget who asked, but in case it was you:
“My observation is that wetting the pencil allows you to get a darker line,” Dr. Howard said. “There’s a softening of the material, some absorption of moisture into pore spaces that makes a mix that will rub off more easily. If it were pure graphite, there would be no pores to let the moisture in.”
In case you needed another reason to watch the final season of The Wire.
Yes, the last season. The last theme is basically asking the question, why aren’t we paying attention? If we got everything right in the last four seasons in depicting this city-state, how is it that these problems—which have been attendant problems regardless of who is in power—how is it that they endure? That brings into mind one last institution, which is the media. What are we paying attention to? What are we telling ourselves about ourselves? A lot of people think that we’re going to impale journalists. No. It’s not quite that. What stories do we want to hear? How closely do they relate to truth; how distant are they from the truth? We have a story idea about media and consumers of media. What stories get told and what don’t and why it is that things stay the same.
Calling all Chinese freebooters.
Y’know, I’ve been wondering why The American Shore, Delany’s book-length study of Disch’s “Angouleme,” is so hard to come by. Now I know.
What if my gold be wrapped in ore?
None throws away the apple for the core.
But if thou shalt cast all away as vain,
I know not but ’twill make me dream again.
