Like useless young men in a depression

MSNBC has a story about a woman who "went to work for weeks expecting to be laid off and felt relief when it finally happened."

It reminded me of the character Hungry Joe in Catch-22 who has fulfilled the number of bombing missions necessary to be sent back to the States, but lives in total terror. When Col. Cathcart raises the number of missions again, he's relieved, even though it means he'll have to go risk his life again over Italy.

In Yossarian's group there were only a mounting number of enlisted men and officers who found their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser to ask if the orders sending them home had come in. They were men who had finished their fifty missions. ... They worried and bit their nails. They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression. They moved sideways, like crabs. They were waiting for orders sending them home to safety to return from Twenty-Seventh Air Force Headquarters in Italy, and while they waited they had nothing to do but worry and bite their nails and find their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the orders sending them home to safety had come.

They were in a race and knew it, because they knew from bitter experience that Colonel Cathcart might raise the number of missions again at any time. They had nothing better to do than wait. Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and had fistfights with Huple's cat. ... Every time Colonel Cathcart increased the number of missions and returned Hungry Joe to combat duty, the nightmares stopped and Hungry Joe settled down into a normal state of terror with a smile of relief.

Woman will now be able to wipe her own ass

I love stories like this that demonstrate not all the freaks live in San Francisco. Some of them live in the depraved midlands, like... Salt Lake City.

A woman with fingernails each over two feet in length is in the news because she lost them when she was seriously injured in a car crash. This is one case in which the picture taken before the accident is undoubtedly the more horrifying.

Cris took one look at it and said, "Who wiped her butt for her?"

Scenes I missed, part 12

I didn't even know I was not there.

'Lost' Kerouac novel to be published

Publishers Marketplace reports that Harpers has agreed to publish "The Sea is My Brother," a "lost" novel by Jack Kerouac, written in 1942 and based on his experiences in the Merchant Marine. According to the book "Desolate Angel" by Dennis McNally, Kerouac wrote the work while on the Dorchester, where he served in the galley.

A review in Jack Magazine of "Atop an Underwood," the 1999 compendium of Kerouac's early and unpublished writings says that "Underwood" contains "a substantial chunk of the third version of 'The Sea is My Brother'." The biography "Jack Kerouac" by Michael Dittman quotes Kerouac as describing "The Sea is My Brother" as being about "man's simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and self-inflicted agonies. Weley Martin loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down. The story also of another man, in contrast, who escapes society for the sea, but finds the sea a place of terrible loneliness."

Sounds like Kerouac was pretty horny and miserable aboard the Dorchester.

technorati: Jack Kerouac, publishing, book deals

Morte d'un chat

Several years ago I described an apocalyptic cat disaster that occurred when our cat Milagrito tangled with a cat we took care of for a year or so, Six -- also known as the Six-Toed Monster:

Six went to live with a friend in Oakland after his sojourn with us, thus solving the divided house we ran where we had to keep him and Milagrito separated like matter and anti-matter.

This winter the little fella, who had a good five years or so with his new owner as her one and only, got sick. Cris and her euthanized him today and Cris buried him in our garden. Here Cris eulogizes him.

technorati: cats

Finalist, most dubious criminal defense

Possibly the silliest example of the "But she wanted it" defense:

Defense claims woman wanted drug slipped into drink

Focus on the Fundies: Evangelist tries to profit from Australian fire disaster

An Australian fundamentalist is claiming that the Australian fire disaster is God's punishment for the state of Victoria allowing abortion.

Pastor Danny Nalliah says he had a dream that God's "conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb." Of course, this is exactly what American fundies said after Sept. 11 and after Katrina: that the disasters were holy retribution for New York or New Orleans allowing whatever it is they don't like. Of course, when floods hammer the Mississippi valley, or tornadoes decimate a Southern town, they don't have much to say.

It's always been like this: preachers said the same thing when San Francisco was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. After a distiller paid firefighters to save his warehouse, a local wag wrote:

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over-frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And spare Hotaling's whiskey?

technorati: Australia, wildfires, abortion

Dept. of Odd ways of putting it

For a few years I have been on a lonely struggle to point out the idiocy of the constant misuse of the word "need," as in this Jezebel post from yesterday titled "Elizabeth Hasselbeck Needs To STFU About Ashley Judd, Abortion." Really? She needs to?? Like she has a need that isn't being met?

I ran across another strange construction this morning. On an online forum, a woman used this odd phrase, twice (emphasis mine):

My lived experience of the last eight years has been that I have carried a lot of hurt and bitterness around...

My lived experience is that I am exhausted and tired by the double standard...

One thing is that those sentences would still make perfect sense if they just began with the word "I." But what does "my lived experience" mean? As opposed to your experience in Second Life? As opposed to the world you have created in your dreams?

Clearly the writer is insecure about simply stating her opinions and needs to -- and it's all right to use the phrase "needs to" when it is not a synonym for the word "should" -- preface them with some phrase that give them more authority. She is saying "I have really lived and felt these things." But why would she think that anyone would doubt it in the first place?

More celebrity memoirs the solution to publishing's problems

She says she wants to flog "celebrity-driven" books, bringing in "'really smart' writers to help shape those public figures' lives into books." As for the literary part of being a literary agent:

I'm trying not to do too much literary stuff -- which is not to say I'm not taking smart things, but there's a certain type of pretentious novel that I just hate, that I'd spent most of my career trying to write away from... I want to represent books that will actually reach people.

Like celebrity memoirs. More at my Open Salon blog

technorati: books, writers, publishing

Dept. of Too much information

Look at this -- something called SocialWhoIs. The idea is:

Once you've setup an account on Socialwhois, you can create a more detailed biography (Twitter limits you to 160 characters), add links to more social profiles, and add in some interests, which then become clickable so you can find other people on Twitter and Friendfeed (who have also created Socialwhois profiles) with similar tastes.

Stuff like this is like the opposite of what I want the internet to be like. The guy who posted that has this problem:

While the names of some new followers I get on Twitter or Friendfeed immediately ring a bell, with others, I have no idea who the person might be.

Jesus Christ, if you don't know who they are, why should you care?? Are you really on the internet to "find other people with similar tastes" and interests? Then go to a dating site, you tool!

This is why I'm not on Friendster or Facebook or even LinkedIn. I really don't want to get into the whole etiquette of social networking. It's already strange enough that people whom I don't know follow my Twitter feed, but at least that doesn't require any reciprocal action from me.

Then again, I realize I don't have a great instinct for creating networks of friends in the first place.

Good turn deserves another

The ratio of flames versus praise on the web is probably a thousand to one, and I sure don't mind toasting a company or shop when I've received bad service. So to be fair, I want to praise AT&T Wireless and their customer service reps for the great service they gave me this morning.

Last month when I replaced the cell phone Cris uses, I agreed to a GPS service for the line, because she doesn't have a great sense of direction and often calls me for help in finding an unfamiliar address. And since the guy at the AT&T store told me it was free for the first month, I said fine. But she hasn't used the service and doesn't want the charge. So just as I was going to call to cancel the service, I get the first bill, and behold, the first month was not free.

I phoned billing, and they couldn't really help; but they transferred me to Kimberly in customer service, and not only was she able to cancel the GPS service and take the charges off my bill -- including, without me asking, the week beyond the first free month that the service has been active -- but she noticed I could save money on txting charges on the phone I use, signed me up for a cheaper service for the txting, and rebated the charges on the current bill as if I had made the change a month ago. Kimberly was responsive, reasonable, proactive, solved a problem I didn't even know I had, and gave me more than I asked for. Now that's great customer service. Well done, AT&T Wireless.

technorati: AT&T, wireless, cellphone service providers

Google drive? I already have one, and it's called GMail

I was underwhelmed by this report about a putative "GDrive", that is, an online file repository managed by Google.

I don't get it. There already is such a thing; it's called GMail. I use GMail as a file archive all the time, and GMail's excellent search feature -- fast and accurate -- enables me to find my file without having to create and navigate a file hierarchy.

Worrying. This is how Microsoft went bad: they took something that worked just fine, for example Microsoft Word 4.0, and gilded it until it's almost unusable -- meet Microsoft Word 2007! Now I have to keep a laptop around running Windows XP and Microsoft Word 2003 for the rest of my life, so I can actually format a document and trust it to come out the way I want it to. Google, don't go down that road.

technorati: Google

Fakin'

A review of the thriller Taken suggests:

Neeson looks incredibly young and fit .. and he's obviously relishing the chance to play a cold-blooded action bad ass. If the film does well enough, this could easily turn into a Liam Neeson franchise.

Right... the sequels might be called "Makin'," in which he infiltrates the Mafia; "Rakin'," set in Las Vegas; "Shaken," in which he investigates a corrupt construction company which has cut corners on the foundation of a super-skyscraper in an earthquake zone; and the finale of the franchise, "Achin'," in which he plays an aging secret agent who... well, it writes itself.

Critical Mass in Bangalore

Hey, look: there's a Critical Mass ride in Bangalore! What with their choked traffic and lack of sidewalks, it makes sense.

technorati: bicycles, commuting, critical mass

Focus on the Fundies: Skeleton springs out of Haggard's closet

The other shoe has dropped in the latest Ted Haggard scandal, as the young former congregation member of New Life Church publicly discusses how Haggard masturbated in front of him, offered him pills of some sort, and confided that "You can be a man of God and have a little bit of fun on the side."

Meanwhile, Haggard himself appeared on the Oprah show, his successor at New Life Church revealed that Haggard had several inappropriate relationships, and a Colorado Springs bail bondsman and amateur investigator is looking into the financial and legal aspects of l'affaire Haggard.

To top it all off, Haggard's wife Gayle told Oprah that he'd told her years ago that he struggled with same-sex attractions, or, as she put it, "some thoughts."

This story is truly a gift that keeps on giving.

technorati: Ted Haggard

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard may have another skeleton in closet

Now that disgraced former pastor Ted Haggard is promoting an upcoming HBO documentary about his 2006 outing and firing, the folks at his former church are none too happy about it. The current head of the congregation, seemingly resentful that Haggard is back in the public eye, has revealed that a former church volunteer alleged a consensual gay affair with the one-time evangelical superstar.

The documentary, by Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of the House Speaker), premieres on HBO this coming Thursday.

A Colorado Springs religion columnist separately interviewed Pelosi and Haggard, and also uncovers an odd note. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied she ever met Haggard after the disgraced preacher said in an interview in US News and World Report that she comforted him while her daughter was shooting the film. Here's the statement from her office.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church, Colorado Springs

Interview with Yiyun Li -- the personal and political

Yesterday I interviewed author Yiyun Li, whose new novel The Vagrants is the best literary novel I've read in a long time. Get used to me mentioning it, because it's one of those books you feel everyone who appreciates great writing should read.

One of the questions I addressed in the interview has to do with her intention in depicting the lives of people living in a provincial Chinese town in 1979, a few years after the close of the Cultural Revolution. She depicts those lives as very grim, filled with brutality and violence. Some of the details on the smaller scale strike one as particularly heartless, as when she talks about a family where the parents, disappointed after having six female children, don't even bother to give names to the youngest three, who are referred to as Little Fourth, Fifth and Sixth. Other details, about the way the government treats political prisoners, are violent in a more physical way -- for example, they stage a "denunciation ceremony" for a political prisoner, and cut her vocal cords before the rally so she can't shout any counter-revolutionary slogans in front of a crowd.

Given this cruel picture, I asked the author if she intended the book to be an indictment of Chinese society, and she answered very forcefully:

I don't have any intention for the novel to be an indictment of anything. That is a big NO. NO. NO. The situation may seem Chinese and specific to this era, but if you look at history, horrible things happen all the time. Brutality and violence happen all the time. On all scales. I can't shy away from that if I am writing a book.... My story happens to be set in China, and the characters happen to be Chinese. But if you read, say, Toni Morrison's novels, would you say she is depicting an unfairly negative picture of America?

I replied, "Certainly negative, but I would not say unfairly so." But there's more to say. Most Americans are secure enough in their views of their country that they don't object to negative, yet fair, criticism. I don't think China is yet secure enough in its reputation to feel the same way. You'll remember how sensitive they were last year to criticism of their human rights record, and how they took pains to ensure that the picture of China -- during the Olympics, at least -- was a positive one.

Regardless of her intention, I wouldn't be surprised if some people see Li's book as an indictment of Chinese society. But she went on to say:

I think that is a very narrow way of looking at literature... a very soviet, socialist view of how literature should represent certain things. I feel that as a writer the only people I feel responsible to are my characters. And I would need to treat them very fairly.

Of course, that's the right approach for any artist to take. But what strikes me is that, as far as the content of her book is concerned, she feels her first allegiance is not to either the country of her birth or her adopted one -- one she had to struggle to stay in, as I mentioned yesterday -- but to her book's characters.

I admire that very much, and I found much else to admire in the book itself, as I state in the interview.

technorati: writers, Yiyun Li, China

Today's fake: Recorded classical piece played at Inauguration as musicians sawed

Remember the little scandal at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, when a pretty girl lip-synched while an uglier girl with a prettier voice sang behind the scenes? Something of that fakery was in action during Tuesday's inauguration when Yo Yo Ma, Yitzhak Perlman and two other classical musicians played an adaptation of Aaron Copland. Positioned high above the VIPs, the quartet was actually playing -- but what came out of speakers and was heard on television was a pre-recorded version of the piece, because it was so "wicked cold" -- as Ma put it -- that they didn't want to risk weather-related screeches.

Sigh.

technorati: inauguration

Thursday

Today I interviewed author Yiyun Li, whose new novel The Vagrants I just finished reading, and can't say enough good things about. It'll take me a little bit to edit and post the interview, but in the meantime you can read a short profile of the Oakland writer, or read this 2005 Washington Post article about her struggle, ultimately successful, to stay in this country.

technorati: Yiyun Li, books

Chief Justice, new president get a do-over

"Out of an abundance of caution," and after several experts said it might be a good idea, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the new president met at the White House today for a do-over.

"Are you ready to take the oath?" Mr. Roberts said.

"I am," Mr. Obama replied. "And we're going to do it very slowly."

I think this whole "abundance of caution" thing could be a great idea. Imagine, if some people in the Bush administration had gone over some of their snap judgments and knee-jerk reactions "out of an abundance of caution," we might not be in the mess we're in today.

If only the Chief Justice subscribed to the New York Post

Did you cringe when Chief Justice John Roberts murdered the Presidential oath of office when swearing in Barack Obama? If only he were a New York Post subscriber, he could have brought it as a cheat sheet:



Who says newspapers aren't important anymore?

technorati: inauguration, Obama, oath of office

Burden of surrendering reins of gov't too much for Cheney

Cheney Pulls Muscle and Is in Wheelchair

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back on Monday while moving boxes and will be in a wheelchair for Tuesday's inauguration ceremony.

The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said Mr. Cheney was helping to move into his new home in McLean, Va., when he injured his back. His doctor recommended that he use a wheelchair for the next couple of days. Ms. Perino said Mr. Cheney was all right otherwise.

"The vice president is looking forward to being there for tomorrow's historic inaugural activities," she said.

Quiz: What was Cheney really doing when he threw his back out?

    a.) Shredding incriminating documents
    b.) Trying to shift responsibility for his crimes to someone else
    c.) Trying to lift his administration's poll numbers above historic lows
    d.) Trying to get that weird grimace off his face
    e.) Loading his shotgun in order to stage a "hunting accident" tomorrow

technorati: cheney

Focus on the Fundies: Congressman, two others 'anoint' Capitol doorway

As workers readied the inauguration stage in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, a right-wing Georgia congressman and two evangelical ministers prayed over and anointed with oil the Capitol doorway that President-elect Barack Obama and other dignitaries will pass through on Inauguration Day.

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, who introduced an anti-abortion bill days later after Congress convened for the first time, was accompanied by two far-right ministers: Rev. Rob Schenk, a long-time anti-abortion activist and head of something called Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, and Rev. Patrick Mahoney, also an anti-abortion activist and director of something called the Christian Defense Coalition.

An aside: clearly, the thing to do if you're a right-wing Christianist "activist" and all-around media whore is not to have your own church, but to have your own non-profit foundation in Washington DC, so you can do things like anoint the Capitol and appear on Pat Robertson's CBN.

Don't invite Mahoney to any inaugration parties, as he is fasting until Inauguration Day in solidarity with poor people "as well as the 50 million innocent victims of abortion."

technorati: Congress, Schenk, Republicans

A dick to the end, Bush snubs Helen Thomas

Buried in this masturbatory CNN piece about Bush's final press conference, in which the network's White House reporter spends several minutes discussing whether or not the president purposely mispronounces her name, is the note that in his candid farewell to the press, Bush snubbed 88-year-old Helen Thomas, who has covered nine presidents and is regarded as the dean of the White House press corps.

technorati: Bush, journalists, Helen Thomas

Today's fake: man fakes his death, but really badly

If you're going to fake your own death on Monday, don't rent a storage locker in your own name, leave your getaway vehicle there, and let the manager know "I'll be back for it Monday night." So that when you bail out of your private plane and it crashes, obviously with no one in it, and the motorcycle disappears on schedule, people won't totally know what happened.

Actually even before people knew about the getaway motorcycle:

"When I heard there was a plane crash, my first reaction was, this had to be staged," Tom Britt, a friend in Indiana, told CNN affiliate WRTV in Indianapolis. "[My] initial reaction was, 'I bet he wasn't in it.' That turned out to be correct. My second reaction was, he's trying to escape the pressure that was compounding on him."

Could the guy have been any more transparent? Ow, compounding pressure!

Prosecutors in the guy's home state of Indiana promptly issued a felony arrest warrant for the bungler.

Oops, forgot about those rabbits

Australian wildlife managers decided to remove the feral cats from an island to protect the native bird population. Oopsy: without the predatory cats, the rabbit population exploded and consumed the island's vegetation where the birds lived. The result was "widespread ecosystem devastation, and decades of conservation effort compromised."

Those Australians are kind of famous for their brilliant decisions involving wildlife, aren't they? That decision to import rabbits in the first place worked out fabulously.

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard promotes HBO doc

Ted Haggard appeared yesterday before the press to promote the HBO documentary about him, "The Trials of Ted Haggard." (An ironic title, by the way, since Haggard has never been charged with any crime despite admitting to buying and possessing methamphetamine.)

Among the entertaining statements and revelations made by the formerly influential Colorado Springs megachurch pastor:

• Haggard, who preached against homosexuality before being outed as gay, now thinks "sexuality is confusing and complex." Clearly, he learned that lesson the hard way.
• Haggard has softened his views on gay marriage, saying that government should fully recognize the union between any two people and that churches are wrongly fighting a "war" over the word "marriage."
• Speaking of his firing and the way he perceives he has been treated since the scandal, he says he "knows about hatred than I ever dreamed" -- a statement that epitomizes his self-pitying view. Other pitiful statements include the satisfying "At this stage in my life, I'm a loser—a first-class loser" and "It is a sad story... I made myself sad; I made everybody that loves me sad."
• The "spiritual solution" to his fall "was not enough;" he also needed "secular therapy methods."

In a separate story from the dozens covering Haggard's HBO press conference, the Colorado Springs Gazette said the current pastor of Haggard's former church has discharged him from the severance agreement, one of the terms of which was that Haggard would not discuss the scandal publicly. The generous severance package hasn't kept Haggard from saying that his firing from and subsequent treatment by New Life was the equivalent of being told "Go to hell," and complaints like that have some former supporters angry. "The fact that he's attacking the church or New Life Church, when they did so much to help him and his family, is below the belt," said H.B. London, one of the Focus on the Family pastors assigned to "rehabilitate Haggard after his firing.

technorati: Ted Haggard, HBO, documentary

Satire is Dead: Army sends out "Dear John Doe" letters to dead soldiers families

The Army is apologizing for sending out letters to the families of dead soldiers beginning with the words "Dear John Doe..."

The situation evokes the famous passage in Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" where General Dreedle wants to send out letters that say "Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, father, or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.'"

Unintentionally echoing Dreedle's sentiment, Brig. Gen. Reuben D. Jones, Army adjutant general, said, "There are no words to adequately apologize for this mistake or for the hurt it may have caused."

technorati: Army, letters, Catch-22

Eight years' work on her book paid off

On the SF Metroblog, I just posted an interview with novelist Nami Mun, whose work I was alerted to through the blog of another Korean-American writer, Alex Chee.

I hadn't heard of Mun, but she is a Pushcart Prize winner. According to the book deals log on Publishers Marketplace, Mun's book sold in a "significant" deal, which is between $250K and $500K, but she did work on it for eight years. Say she got $250K for the book, that's about $30,000 a year.

Her multi-city book tour has just started, and I hope it goes better than that other guy's.

technorati: writers, book deals, Nami Mun

Focus on the Fundies: Set phasers to stun

I was loath to join in the howling condemnation of Obama's choice of celebrity pastor Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration, but it has been good for something: it's given more visibility to Warren, whose renown across America has been limited to other evangelical Christians. Take a look at this hit piece by Christopher Hitchens on Slate (courtesy 3 Quarks Daily). Hitchens himself is hard to stomach, so I like the spectacle of some snaggle-toothed leftist hawk tearing into the soft belly of the Midwestern megachurch ringmaster. Before Hitchens chokes on his own indignation, maybe he can tackle a few more people on my list. Could you take a look at this guy, Chris?

technorati: Rick Warren, Christopher Hitchens

First rain of 2009

Just to check in for the new year -- yesterday, a cold dry day, we visited friends a few blocks away, and they served us apricot tart made from fruit from their garden.

This morning it was raining gently. I went to Morning Prayer at St. Gregory's as usual, and there was a fellow visiting from out of town who had just been given Sara's book for Xmas, so he was excited to meet her.

I'm looking at this as a four-day weekend, and those are the best. Will try to get some writing-related work done... tomorrow.

Publishing and pain

A very good article in the Village Voice looks at the state of publishing from the perspective of a successful mid-list author. The hook for the story is how the guy, exhausted and disillusioned on a book tour from hell, managed to piss off some anonymous bloggers who proceeded to french-fry him online until he backed down. But the larger, more interesting issues addressed by the piece have to do with the desperate, almost flailing actions of book publicists, who don't understand the general uselessness of book tours for novelists, and the sad delusions of the novelists themselves, who think their book tour will be like a victory lap in front of informed crowds of fans and then find it amounts to appearing to empty rows of chairs in small towns where... but read for yourself:

Then comes the Friday night in Winnetka, Illinois, when you pull up to a street where the only light is coming from the bookstore, and you realize this won't be good. There's one customer inside, and the reading is canceled, but you talk him into buying a book anyway... There's the afternoon in a small, depressed Arkansas town when... the promised crowd and the television film crew have all been canceled, preempted by a big football game. Three middle-aged women walk in, escorting their senile grandmother, who they've brought back to town after an absence of 70 years to see what she remembers, which is nothing. The bookstore owner flips a thumb at you: "Why don't you do your little show for them?" And you do, dear reader, you do.

The piece captures the reality of what being a "successful" author -- one with good reviews and middling best-sellers to their name -- must really be like. For all those (like me) with unpublished novels who imagine (as I used to) that their lives will change when they're published, it's a good reality check.

Still, I know getting published means something. I have books on the shelves with my name on the spine. That doesn't mean I never have to work again, but it's something.

technorati: publishing

Things I had to look up: feuilleton

In a piece on Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, Paul Berman makes a comparison to:

A few years ago, Mario Vargas Llosa published an op-ed newspaper column about how he had given up smoking thanks to some useful tips from Gabriel García Márquez, and I came away thinking that I and 1 million other newspaper readers might very well have gone on following Vargas Llosa's nicotine narrative through another 300 feuilleton installments, if only he had chosen to natter on. It was because of that same confident mix of self-assured relaxation and electric high alert.

WTF? Some sort of 19th century... what? Turns out that it is:

1. The part of a European newspaper devoted to light literature, criticism, and the like; also something printed in this section.
2. A novel published in installments.
3. A short literary piece.

Here's part of the example they give: "Finally, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung offers tongue-in-cheek reading of the situation on the front page of its feuilleton section..."

I see. So the NYT Book Review, or the Insight section of the Chronicle's Sunday paper, are feuilletons (pronounced (FOI-i-ton).

Berman goes on:

In other parts of the world, in regions distant from Latin America—or so my wanton theorizing leads me to suppose—the pitiable champions of literature dwell under oppressive clouds of relentless doubt and irony, and are nervously stimulated by a bleak suspicion that anything they write must surely be a lie, and their own work is merely a game, and their avid readers don't really give a damn, and literature's last remaining purpose is to arch an eyebrow. But not in Latin America. The Latin Americans compose their narratives with a cheerful élan akin to that of the Victorian novelists. They do not think that literature is a lie. They are madly in love with their own inexhaustibly lush and wealthy literary tradition, and they feel a duty to push their tradition forward into the experimental future in the name of every decent hope of mankind and of Latin America; and their piety toward the past and zeal for the future fill their voices with the lovely and seductive vibrato of supreme self-confidence. I don't vouch for the universal explanatory power of my own theory, and yet something like this does seem to account for The Savage Detectives.

What a depressing paragraph that is -- self-hating and hopeless, it embodies the "oppressive clouds of relentless self-doubt" that the writer speaks of. So then I had to look up the writer, Berman. His Wikipedia article makes him sound sort of like Joan Didion, only he seems never to have published any novels.

Xmas is hard on farmilies

This ad from the Craigslist rants and raves section is too extreme even for me to reprint, but if the last sentence is any indication, somebody's family Xmas was a hard one.

Friends' sites, links and projects

San Francisco author Michelle Richmond had a reader so entranced with her novel The Year of Fog that he took a Flickr photo set of the places and things mentioned in the book. The novel is being developed for the screen by Newmarket Films.

Stephen Elliott and some other folks have a new online magazine, The Rumpus, and they're having a benefit reading on Jan. 14.

Xmas forecast

It's cold and rainy and intermittently sunny and blustery here at the House of Cats and Rhinos. We're gettin' up slow, having crossed the Bay Bridge after midnight on our way back from Xmas in Walnut Creek. Fortunately there was no backup at the toll plaza, since only about 4 lanes were open and most of the drivers took about a minute and a half each to grok the concepts of "toll" and "four dollars."

For Xmas, I think I'm going to give myself the present of self-publishing my Rat Pack novel. Why not let people read the damn thing. It'll take a while to get that into the pipeline, though, since the formatting has to be right or the resulting book will look like crap.

Looking forward to a week off, too. That's the scene here. Back to regularly scheduled programming soon.

Immature content only

On Friday I mentioned the CNet editor who self-published his novel and then wrote a long column about doing so. Now it seems (courtesy Galleycat) Apple won't allow his book to be sold as an e-book for the iPhone because of a single line in which "a teenage girl telling a detective that she overheard her friend asking a gentleman caller to '(love) me like you mean it,' just with a slightly more emphatic verb." The story goes on to speculate just how this phrase came to the attention of Apple, quoting a developer: "What would happen if I (a Romanian) would publish an e-book filled with Romanian obscenities? -- would Apple's staff need to learn Romanian... and read the entire ebook ... to make sure this doesn't happen?"

But the part of the story that caught my attention was lower down, in a section recounting Apple's struggle to keep iPhone apps SFW:

Apple's definition of "objectionable" has been questioned before. After initially balking, Apple finally relented to the extremely influential fart joke lobby last week and permitted applications such as Pull My Finger and iFart Mobile (ranked 3rd and 10th, respectively, among paid App Store applications at the moment) under what was described as a "Mature" section.

Really? Sounds like apps with names like that should be in an "Immature" section.

technorati: books, Apple, censorship

It's Bad Behavior Tuesday™! -- holiday feeling edition

A guy who was on the plane that crashed in Denver on Saturday sent Twitter messages about the experience, beginning with "Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!" (sic) After being taken back to the airport terminal, he wrote that passengers were being held in the airline's lounge but weren't given drinks. "You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic," he complained: "boo." His username? 2drinksbehind.

The CEO of Fry's, a West Coast electronics retailer, is being accused of scamming $65 million from the company in kickbacks from suppliers.

Today's fake: The New York Times apologized yesterday after publishing a fake letter to the editor purporting to be from the mayor of Paris.

Today's hoax: Publisher Jane Daniel is now speaking openly about having published a years-long hoax in which author Mischa Defonseca claimed to have survived the Holocaust as a child by living with wolves in a forest. Daniel is speaking openly, that is, because she has just published her own book about her role in the hoax. See my previous entry on the hoax.

In Colorado Springs, this headline says it all: Man Found Outside With Pants Down May Lose Legs.

'Sopranos' actor acquitted in cop shooting

In what must be a happy holiday story for, well, his family, former actor Lillo Brancato Jr. has been acquitted on felony murder charges in the 2005 shooting death of an off-duty cop.

Brancato, who will be remembered for shooting the Christopher character in the series' second season (the episode entitled "Full Leather Jacket"), also appeared with Sopranos co-star Drea DiMatteo in the 2001 Abel Ferrera film 'R Xmas.

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard says 'I never said I was heterosexual'

The Colorado Springs paper has seen the documentary "The Rise and Fall of Ted Haggard," which will be shown on HBO next month, and has these tidbits:

• Haggard, pronounced "one hundred percent heterosexual" after his three-week rehabilitation experience following his 2006 implosion, says "he never claimed to be heterosexual, as was once reported, and he continues to struggle with same-sex attraction. But he's committed to living a heterosexual life because he believes it's better for children to be raised by a mother and a father."
• Haggard's wife says she stayed with him to restore honor to the family, in some mixed-up way.
• Haggard now works selling insurance -- not so far from being a salvation-selling preacher -- but has not yet been successful at it and says, "Right now, I am a loser."

He sure comes off that way. Welcome to the real world, Ted! Maybe that other foamer will have to get a job, too.

Update: On Open.Salon.com, a former member of Haggard's church and babysitter for Haggard's children comments on his attempts to parlay the documentary into more fame.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church, Colorado Springs

Two articles about the state of publishing

Two articles/blog postings caught my eye today.

Courtesy Galleycat, a long, almost obsessively comprehensive article by a CNet editor about self-publishing his novel. He compares services, makes strategy suggestions, and comes to the conclusion that you have to spend the money a real publisher would have spent on your book if you want it to be good at all. But at least it's published then.

Then in Huffington Post, someone writes about the publishing industry's seeming disinterest in publishing books male readers would want to read.

Since the novel I wrote for a local small press was designed specifically for the male market, but turned down by the publisher and dumped back in my lap for a small kill fee with the restriction that I can only self-publish it, these two articles coincide with my own writing career, such as it is at the moment.

That's right -- the novel I signed a contract for in 2007 and wrote in six months, more or less to order, was rejected, and I'll wind up self-publishing it. I'll be sure to publicize it here, once I go through many of the steps outlined by that self-publishing article (but without spending all that money on the book).

technorati: books, publishing, self-publishing, reading

Focus on the Fundies: Give money so he can 'minister without hindrance'

For a few months I've been monitoring the ravings of a Pentacostal preacher who is madly trying to establish a nationwide "ministry" dedicated to ridding American cities of Satanic influence. I first noticed him when he made some passing comment about how the Colorado mountain tourist town of Manitou Springs is well-known as a Satanic base camp.* Since then, I've seen him move spastically around the country, from Kansas City to Detroit, attempting to gather followers.

Recently he's been begging openly for money, and a blog posting yesterday really takes the cake for shameless solicitation. Emphasis mine.

Biblically it's clear that believers live in a different economic system, and I'm convinced that the church is called to be financial forerunners -- we are called to lead the way by giving our way out of this recession.

We pray you would consider this to be fertile and good soil for your seed in 2009. In fact, we have many challenges right this very moment, and we'd like to invite you to give before the end of 2008. Your gifts are tax-deductible... Would you invest in this ministry of teaching, planting and revival? Your donation will help us as we... (m)inister in the cities of the earth without any financial hindrance. God has moved powerfully in Detroit and other places through the ministry in 2008. Due to a timely rumbling in this city, we will be ministering in Detroit 6 times (at least) in the first half of 2009 alone.

So he goes to economically devastated Detroit and invites followers to "Give our way out of this recession." And how will he use that money? To help the poor of Detroit? To retrain auto workers being thrown out of their jobs?

Your donation will help us as we... (d)evote ourselves to the time consuming yet deeply important ministries of prayer and study. It's common for full-time prayer missionaries to devote 6 hours or more to prayer each day. (And to)
Focus on our call to author prophetic materials. I've had a book burning in my spirit for over two years, yet have not had the time to start it.

Nice! He wants to spend hours of day in prayer, and the rest of the time writing a book. Me too, dude!

To top it all off, he illustrates his plea with a picture of his family. Is it a nice soft-toned picture of them wearing sweaters around a Christmas tree? No, they're all looking glumly into the camera with tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on the tape. (A one-year-old baby is spared this discomfort; they stuck the LIFE label on its chest.) I guess the point is, If you don't send him money, it's the same thing as gagging him and his whole family.

If only it were so.

* cached web page

technorati: fundamentalists, Christianists, far-right, evangelicals, bipolar

Another ray of sunlight: arch-conservative Paul Weyrich dies

Far-right foamer Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist who founded the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, has died at age 66.

Weyrich was one of the main people behind anti-gay measures, using them to motivate hysterical Christianists and hateful conservatives to the polls where they would elect more neocon Republicans -- a scam that continues to work to this day. In this sample of his work, from the Media Matters website, Weyrich comments in 2006 on the Mark Foley scandal:

WEYRICH: Here is the real problem. It has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex. The idea that he should be continued -- or should have been continued as chairman of the Committee on Missing and Exploited Children is, you know, given their knowledge of that, is just outrageous.

NPR host Nichelle NORRIS: Now before we go on, I think I can say, Mr. Weyrich, that there are quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.

WEYRICH: Well, I don't care whether they take exception to it. It happens to be true. I mean --

NORRIS: That is your opinion.

WEYRICH: Well, it's not my opinion. It's the opinion of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with them.

technorati: right-wing, conservatives, Weyrich

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard pushes himself back in the spotlight

Ted Haggard, the disgraced megachurch leader whose outing as a meth-snorting Big Gay embarrassed the Christian Right just prior to the 2006 midterm elections, has agreed to promote an HBO documentary about his rise and fall.

The documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard," was shot by Alexandra Pelosi, who earlier made an HBO documentary "Friends of God," which also featured Haggard. The film is scheduled to air on HBO next month.

Haggard startled observers earlier this fall by appearing in the pulpit of a rural Illinois megachurch as a "Christian businessman" talking of his rise an fall as a star of the conservative Christian Evangelical movement, and now he's pushing himself into the spotlight on television. It's not enough for him to appear in a documentary; he's so starved for attention that he also signs on to promote the film, which I suspect will show him as a complete lying douchebag. What a media whore!

technorati: Ted Haggard, fundamentalists, Alexandra Pelosi

Things I had to look up: Boethius

After I sent this article on Buddhist-Christian contacts during the 8th century to a friend, she replied, "like boethius, they were busy and a' thinkin' during them there dark ages!!"

Due to my lack of a comprehensive liberal arts education, however, I had no idea who Boethius was. In this case the Wikipedia article was helpful enough for the likes of me. Known to the Roman Catholic Church as St. Severinus Boethius, the 6th century scholar and administrator was dedicated to preserving concepts of classical philosophy; he is credited with developing a three-layered classification of music as well as the Wheel of Fortune. (Cue music from Carmina Burana.)

On Open Salon: The 'spiritual, not religious' cliché

The vision of an infinitude of solitaries all practicing their own tiny, self-wrought "spirituality" is really a vision of spiritual death. Instead, I believe spiritual health depends on a recognition of interdependence, service to and with others, and participation in a cultural tradition that has the potential to beautify and conserve society.

More at my Open.Salon.com page.

Because, in Iraq, there are no cream pies

During a press conference in Iraq, as President Push was speaking alongside the Iraqi prime minister, a man hurled two shoes at Bush, one after the other. In this screen capture, Bush ducks the first shoe:

Click the picture to go to BBC tape of the event. Extra points to the man for getting off both throws before he was jumped upon and beaten to a pulp.

Meanwhile, someone burned down Sarah Palin's Wasilla, AK church. Sheesh!

Bettie Page, 1924-2009

Bettie Page, inspiration for young women across America and an icon of the 20th century as surely as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, died today at age 85. A selection of her classic pinup photographs, as well as drawings of her classic image, appear with an obituary on her website.

technorati: Bettie Page

Et tu, Blago?

I would mercilessly go after this story if the accused were a Republican, so in the interest of balance and fairness, let me rip Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich a new one for exhibiting new lows in cynicism and corruption. The two-term governor, formerly a three-term congressman, was arrested today under an indictment courtesy well-known U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, previously famous for prosecuting Scooter Libby.

Among Blagojevich's alleged crimes, one stands out: he intended to offer an appointment to Barack Obama's seat in the Senate to the highest bidder. Fitzgerald said today he purposely arrested Blago to prevent this, among other things, from happening. Disgusting.

Details of the indictment include Blagojevich saying "I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I'm saying? And if I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself... (A Senate seat) is a f---ing valuable thing; you just don't give it away for nothing."

technorati: Blagojevich

Nine-year-old gets a book deal

A nine-year-old boy who wrote a book titled "How to Talk to Girls" is the toast of the internet this week, and on top of it all, he now has a movie deal. 20th Century Fox will adapt the how-to advice into a charming comedic vehicle for its next doomed child star.

Perhaps the young man can follow up his success with "How to Talk to Publicists," "How to Survive the Onset of Puberty While in Rehab," and "How to Sue Your Parents For All That Money They Said You Were Getting."

technorati: books, publishing, book deals