Barack Obama's summer vacation reading list:

"The Way Home" by George Pelecanos
"Hot, Flat, and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman
"Lush Life" by Richard Price
"Plainsong" by Kent Haruf
"John Adams" by David McCullough

Two teenagers talking

Girl: You should take up knitting.

Girl 2: No, crocheting is way cooler. Crocheting is the new knitting. You obviously don't speak to any old people.

A little personal analysis

Among the LibraryThing Unsuggester unsuggests for me (on the basis of the books I read, and reverse statistical correlations, the Unsuggester tells me what I shouldn't read) are pretty much any book by Sophie Kinsella (about Shopaholics) and

The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts by Judith Wallerstein.

This is based not on a knowledge of me, but because I have read: a Henning Mankel book (whatever), an early Joseph Conrad novel (?), a biography of Shelley (well, no one who reads a biography of Shelley will ever get married, at least not to Shelley or anyone he knew), the Vintage Book of Amnesia (hard to stay married if you don't remember that you are, or where you live) and, clearly most importantly, The Magic Pudding.

It was The Magic Pudding that gave me away.

Best use of the word "basically"

A typical sentence from "Inherent Vice," typlifying the pleasures of that book:

Next morning -- ocean smell, fresh coffee, a cool edge -- Doc was in Wavos, going through the Sunday Times to see if there was anything new about the Wolfmann case, which there wasn't -- though of course with twenty or thirty different sections you never knew what might be hiding among the real estate ads -- and was about to dig in to a specialty of the house known as Shoot The Pier, basically avocados, sprouts, jalapenos, pickled artichoke hearts, Monterey jack cheese, and Green Goddess dressing on a sourdough loaf that had first been sliced lengthwise, spread with garlic butter, and toasted, seventy-nine cents and a bargain at half the price, when who should stroll in, who else, but Shasta Fay.

Nice work By AP Writer

By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press Writer Wayne Parry, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 1 min ago

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.

The incident began at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.

The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name.

According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:

"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.
"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.
"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.
"I'm on tour," the singer replied.

A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.

The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show.

The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.

The officers thanked him for his cooperation.

"He couldn't have been any nicer to them," Woolley added.

How did it feel? A Dylan publicist did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.

Inherent Vice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U

I like the trailer -- narrated by the unseen author.

Party talk

Friend, to me: I'm so glad you came.

Me: I'm glad I'm here.

Friend: I would have been lonely otherwise. If you hadn't come, everyone here would have been civilized.

We are such stuff as hot dogs are made of

"Now, of course, we're all mustard."

-- Dr. Seuss, "Happy Birthday To You."

from Lolita, the movie

Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters):

You touch me and I go limp as a noodle. It drives me crazy.

Humbert Humbert (James Mason):

I know what you mean.

If your birthday is some other day

You become more loving this year. With the help of a mentor or healer, you clear away old resentments, make a plan for living life your way and stay on track. The next seven weeks bring new friends and influences into your world. You'll make money with a creative endeavor and you'll make people happy, too. Libra and Virgo adore you. Your lucky numbers are 30, 25, 39, 15 and 2.

New friends, whoo hoo! And only ten more zodiac signs left to convince to adore me!

Cleveland -- If not for . . .

I'd heard it said that if not for the city of New Orleans, with its chicory-roasted coffee, plates of sausage, and beignets, and also for San Francisco, with its hot croissants, organic fruit jam, and fresh-ground coffee, and possibly New York, with its hot bialys and bowls of steamed prunes, Cleveland would have been considered the "City of Breakfasts." Accordingly, I was not disappointed by the Muffin Pit, by my two eggs, over easy with a side of bacon, or by my couple of pieces of wheat toast and two of those puffy donuts on the side, all prepared by a balding, unshaven, foreign-looking, yet somehow curiously at home counterman in a grease-spattered apron. Our orders were delivered, along with a handsome square container of grape preserves, two glasses of orange juice, and two cups of coffee, by a grandmotherly waitress wearing a yellowed doily crown atop her stringy gray hair. I had been keyed up for the meeeting, but, needless to say, I suddenly found my appetite.

from Erased by Jim Krusoe

The short version

[edit] Crime and Punishment (1866)


Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."

Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.

If not reason, then the devil.


from Wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dostoevsky

In Jeff In Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer speculates that what Dostoevsky had in mind when he defined man as a creature that gets used to everything, was the price of fine glass in Venice.

Selections from "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi"

When he came to a half-decent canal, he sat beside it and didn't weep.


{ to a goat who has asked the narrator the difference between human and goat consciousness:}

"Well, you see, that is probably the difference. The ability to articulate things. Language. Self-examination. . . . " I didn't know what else to say. It seemed I was lacking in exactly the qualities I claimed distinguished me from my interlocutor. The more I tried to articulate the difference between myself and the goat, the more we had in common.

"I am in mourning for myself," I said, reprising the old Chekhov joke. "My old self refuses to die. The new is struggling to be reborn. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

"It may seem extreme that . . . "

I suppose this story will be everywhere, but for now it is worth repeating in full:

"A man plotted to kill his adoptive parents with the help of a friend he met on the internet, a court has heard.

Christopher Monks, 24, wanted Shaun Skarnes to murder his parents Christopher and Elizabeth Monks while they slept and then perform an extreme sex act on him, Preston Crown Court was told.

The bisexual pair are alleged to have hatched the plot after meeting on an internet site about "Furries" – people who pretend to be animal characters and share sexual role-playing fantasies.

Skarnes, 19, visited Monks' family home in Preston Road, Clayton-le-Woods, near Chorley, in February after weeks of chatting to him online.

The two played computer games before Skarnes left, telling Mr and Mrs Monks he was getting the train home to Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, and thanking them for having him round.

Monks then watched a DVD with his parents while Skarnes waited for hours in a playpark nearby until he received a text from his friend, telling him the couple were asleep in the four-bedroom house they shared with their son.

Mr Monks woke in the early hours of the morning to find Skarnes beside his bed, clutching a kitchen knife.

He grappled with the intruder and yelled for help from his wife, who was sleeping downstairs.

Dad-of-three Mr Monks told the court: "I thought he was trying to kill me. My wife tried to hit him with a stick but it broke."

She then began to talk to him in a calming way. At that point, his manner changed completely."

The couple went downstairs to find a police officer on the doorstep, who had responded to Mrs Monks' 999 call.

Mr Monks was left with bruised arms, a cut palm and bite marks.

Monks, who was downstairs during the attack, was initially treated as a witness but then later arrested.

Prosecutor Dennis Watson QC told the court that while Skarnes carried out the attack, ex-Runshaw College student Monks stayed downstairs, deleting "incriminating" text messages.

Mr Watson said Monks had talked about his sexual desire for his penis to be bitten off in online chatroom discussions.

He told the jury: "It may seem extreme that he wanted his penis bitten off, but there is ample evidence from websites he visited and conversations with Shaun Skarnes that this was a deeply held interest and one he found sexually stimulating."

It seems that Skarnes was to receive no money for killing Mr and Mrs Monks but the prospect of biting off Monks' penis. This was the climactic act of the conspiracy.

"Elizabeth Monks told the court that her adopted son was a quiet boy who never lost his temper and did well at his temping job at an educational training centre, where she also works.

Her husband added: "We have no doubt that (Christopher) did not intend to go to this extreme.

There is no-one in our closest circle of friends who is not shocked at what has happened."

Skarnes, of Sutton Way, Ellesmere Port, and Monks both deny conspiracy to murder Mr and Mrs Monks."

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Son-39in-plot-to-kill.5477291.jp

via: http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions/

From "The Scarab" by James Tate

For my birthday, Donna gave me a scarab from
Egypt, which she said was thousands of years old, and
said to have special powers. Its a beetle carved from
stone. "What kind of powers?" I asked her. "It'll keep
you from being eaten by the hippopotamus god. It'll stop
you from bumping into pyramids. And it will make you
the sexual prince of the universe," she said. "Those are the
three things I wanted most in life. What a great present.
Thanks sweetheart," I said. "Of course that last part
just works with me as your lover," she added. "Believe me,
I fully understood that, " I said. "To tell you the truth,
Peter, I have no idea what kind of special powers it's
supposed to have. . . . "

. . . I was distracted, agitated. I
kept looking around the office for something. At first, I
didn't know what I was looking for. The, slowly, it dawned
on me. The hippopotamus god was coming for me. I reached
in my pocket and clutched the scarab. It was coming, and I
was ready.

Ironic Comfort

The tongue in cheek apotheosis of the song in which the listener is to take comfort from the support and wisdom of the band, a la, say, Hey Jude or Everybody Hurts:

Are you under the impression
This isn't your life?
Do you dabble in depression?
Is someone twisting a knife in your back?
Are you being attacked?
Oh, this is a fact
That you need to know

Oh, oh, oh, oh

Wilco, Wilco,
Wilco will love you, baby

from Wilco (The Song)

I'll like this a lot, some time, some other hour.