“… so, where’s the bar tender?”
The lines of the day, courtesy of friends and conversations:
- “doesn’t get nearly as hot and it lasts a lot longer”
- “she was mistress of statistical anomalies”
Post EVP goodness Saturday we tried the Village Bar next door, but the atmosphere wasn’t quite right, even with (or perhaps because) of the stacks of empty beer cans, although madison.com has a post about how they supposedly have one of the better burgers in town — we didn’t find out, but went down the road for something a tad more Irish, and thanks to F I found a quick-and-easy bus back to the capitol and then to my own bus. Only a few more days of the days getting shorter.
I did not grade as much as I wished, and last evening I found myself in need of an SG1-fix, so “200” it was — “No, you are most transparent, O’Neill,” and “I can see right through you.” Guess you had to be there.
The daily news:
- In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt: “Valentina Sivryukova knew her public service messages were hitting the mark when she heard how one Kazakh schoolboy called another stupid. ‘What are you,’ he sneered, ‘iodine-deficient or something?'”
- Behind Closed Doors: “As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded.” (see the Slide Show)
- Ten players ejected following Knicks-Nuggets brawl: Another reason why I have a hard time caring about professional sports (aka thuggery) — I really care about overpaid brats beating each other up (instead, give me the boxing episode from BSG a few weeks ago, please)
- Georgia rules Potter can stay on school shelves: it’s sad it even has to go this far. “In October 2005, Laura Mallory, a mother with children at Gwinnett elementary schools, asked a local committee to ban the books about a young wizard, saying they were violent and promoted witchcraft.” Promoting witchcraft — this stuff kills me.
My favorite 5-star review of the day must be an old one for Dictionary of the Khazars, which came up briefly in conversation earlier today after an hour of fiction writing over coffee:
As it seems to me, the decrepitude of Logos is by now glaringly evident (except for fashion fans & addicted devourers of blase fiction quasinovelties ).
On political level ( which escapes readers not conversant with ex-Yu “sound and fury”)- this novel is a political pamphlet thinly disguised as a work of postmodernist fiction. It was used ( not misused, because the author’s intent has resonated at exactly the same frequency ) by Belgrade agitprop machine ( “Poor Serbs, in fact *we* are Khazars, an enadangered species ( adding the corollary: threatened by genocide-bent murderous neighbors, from Slovenes to Albanians ) ).
On aesthetic level: Umberto Eco’s methodology copy-pasted, combined with outright plagiarism of Andreas Okopenko’s “Lexikon-einer sentimentalen Reise zum Exporteuertreffen in Duden”. Yet- this is just an example of brainless hip flooding the remnants of what used to be called imaginative literature. The last great works of fiction being the novels of Broch and Lowry ( and good, but still lagging behind, fictions of Marquez, Burgess and McCarthy )- Pavic’s book rightly deserves to be admired & praised. In this hollow age swarming with plagiarist snobs- “Dictionary of the Khazars” is a canonical book, well suited for an average afficionado of (post)modern/mortem wasteland. Therefore, I give the book 5 stars.
It is a bit like reading LISP, which I’ve always wanted to learn (I have a copy of The Little Schemer on a shelf around here somewhere).
Speaking of books, we transitioned slowly to House of Leaves (sorry, only about 70 pages in at this point), and then to Only Revolutions — the hardcover evidently comes with ribbon bookmarks … one word for that: yum.
