I'm not the only one
Topic: Whatever
Living in Macedonia, where people (especially women) tend to dress up when they leave the house, broke me of the habit of appearing in public in sweatpants. Apparently, the Balkans have inspired the NBA to attempt sartorial improvements, as well:

According to The Washington Post, the idea for the new dress code was born out of a dinner in honour of the US Olympic basketball team in Belgrade last year. While the Serbian national team wore matching sports jackets, many of the NBA players arrived in sweat suits, oversize jeans, diamond earrings and platinum chains. Coach Larry Brown was said to have been so embarrassed he considered sending some of the worst dressed players back to their hotel.

I almost forgot - it's a 'holiday'!
Topic: Whatever
In honor of his recent visit and current campaign to bring his world tour to Australia, please allow me to be the first (and hopefully, only) person to wish you all a Hoffy Halloween!

Quizcrastination
Topic: Odds and ends
Because there's nothing like a quiz when you can't quite bring yourself to finish your first essay, or start on your second just yet (and the third and fourth are really best not brought up at all):


'Tis a great mystery, but somehow you have come to
belong in Jane Eyre; a random world of love,
kindness, madness, bad luck and lunatic
ex-wives. There really isn't much to say about
the place you belong in. It's your place, and
though it seems far from reality largly due to
how random the events are, you seem to enjoy
it. You belong in a world where not too many
people understand you, and where you can be
somewhat of a recluse.

Which Classic Novel do You Belong In?
brought to you by Quizilla


Does this then mean if I meant to be in a modern novel, it's this one?

(Quiz link via Ampersand Duck)

Most excellent advice

Never surf a tsunami, California town says

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An exclusive California beach enclave has raised eyebrows by passing out tsunami safety brochures that warn residents, in capital letters, that they should never try to surf one.

The pamphlets, part of an emergency preparedness campaign, inform residents of Malibu that tsunamis often follow large earthquakes and advise: "NEVER GO TO THE BEACH TO WATCH FOR, OR SURF, A TSUNAMI WAVE!"

"I'm speechless," Malibu surfer Candace Brown told the Los Angeles Times. "I think the last thing people will think about when they feel an earthquake is surfing."

Malibu's emergency preparedness director said he thought it would be prudent to address all possibilities.

"Some people may feel that we are stating the obvious and some people may not," Brad Davis said. "We want to encourage people to move away from the coast rather than toward it."

I'd think there would probably be more sensible, if less amusing, ways to spend the municipal emergency-preparedness budget.

(From Y! India News)

An opportunity about to be missed
Topic: Events
Wouldn't you know, just as I'm heading into the essay-writing crunch, which not only leaves me no time for anything else but generally sucks all the will to write right out of me, somebody decides that next week is going to be National Write a Short Story Week (aka WriAShorStorWe). Even granted that my approach would be to write something at the last minute, decide that it's crap and should never see the light of day and therefore not submit it anyway, in theory the idea of participating is still appealing, or would be if I didn't already have to churn out at least 5,000 words over the course of the next week (and a grand total of 14,500 before the end of November).

Although, the 'National' presumably applies to the US, where I'm not, and the week was declared by fiat on a blogger's whim, so what's to stop me from declaring, say, the first week of December 'International Write a Short Story Week?' (which it seems I should call something like InNaWriShoStoWe because that's what everyone else is doing). Watch this space . . .*

(discovered at 50 Books)


*Not really. I'll have forgotten everything up to and including my name by the end of November, and I definitely won't recall any of my more absurd declarations. Except perhaps those that are along the lines of 'I give up! I'm dropping out now, before I have to write any more essays!' Because I make a lot of those.

Sweet, sweet sleep
Topic: Whatever
The Guardian reports that scientists are beginning to figure out why it helps to sleep on a problem.

In different stages of sleep our brains piece together thoughts and experiences, then file them in a structured way, giving us clearer memories and ultimately, better judgment.

Heh. So, sleep deprivation basically explains my entire semester. I'm glad something does.

Books, again
Topic: Reading
I'm becoming obsessed with the prospect of reading books for fun once these wretched essays are over. The reading/research isn't too bad right now because I'm working on an essay on women and militarism and a lot of the research is highly readable, but I fully expect to beating my head on any available hard surface when I get to the essay on social impact assessment. Its a rare social scientist who writes readable project assessments. In the interests of feeding my obsession with non-academic literature, and inspired by Pop Culture Junk Mail, I had a look at Time's list of the top 100 English-language novels from 1923 to the present, to see how my reading history stacks up. My favorites from the list: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Read, re-read, dog-eared, finally just wore my copy right out between the ages of about 10 and 12. Beloved - One of the very few books I feel should be required reading for everyone. The Blind Assassin - For some reason, I'm surprised that they didn't pick Alias Grace. I'm not sure why that is, because I certainly think The Blind Assassin is a great book, but it just hasn't stuck with me the way Alias Grace has. A Clockwork Orange - Loathed the violence, loved the incredible richness of the language. Gone With the Wind - This might be the first "epic" novel I ever read. In which case, its responsible for a lot of subsequent late nights and eyestrain. The Great Gatsby - I find something new to appreciate every time I re-read it. 1984 - Never fails to give me chills. On the Road - The only book from my brief but intense Kerouac phase that I still enjoy. Snow Crash - This may be sticking with me because I've read it the most recently of the books on the list, but I thought it was great - smart, well-plotted, compelling characters, convincing vision of the future. To Kill a Mockingbird - I'm embarassed to admit that I didn't read this until I absolutely had to in my sophomore year of high school, but I think I've read it at least once a year since then. Even now, I still relate to Scout. I wouldn't have put them in the Top 100, but then nobody asked me: Catch-22 - Read when I was playing "catching up on the classics" in Macedonia because new books weren't always easy to get. I think it must need to be read with an understanding of the time in which it was written and published to be fully appreciated, because my initial reaction to it was "What's all the fuss about?" The Catcher in the Rye - Another book I read because I had to in sophomore English. This did not go over as well as To Kill a Mockingbird. Holden Caulfield is a whiny little punk. The Corrections - Overhyped. I probably would've given it's place on the list to A Thousand Acres. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - I really think this is the least interesting of the Narnia books. I would've picked just about any of the others instead. Slaughterhouse-5 - Again, like Catch-22 perhaps better appreciated with a stronger understanding than I had of the time in which it was published. I think I probably would've picked Cat's Cradle as the best of Vonnegut's work. Tried to read, but just gave up: Light in August - Considering giving this one another chance, but couldn't get into it when I first tried to read it in high school. Lord of the Flies - I think it might've been the total absence of female characters that put me off this one. Naked Lunch - Attempted during my Kerouac/Beat phase, but quickly abandoned. Just not my thing. The Sound and the Fury - My failure to complete this and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the summer before my senior year of high school convinced me that I should re-think my plan to major in English in college. Tropic of Cancer - Miller's writing style is insufficient to mitigate his misogyny. Thinking I should add to my between-semesters reading list: Brideshead Revisited Death Comes for the Archbishop Go Tell It on the Mountain Housekeeping Invisible Man Mrs. Dalloway Native Son A Passage to India Possession The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Their Eyes Were Watching God Things Fall Apart The Sheltering Sky Ubik Watchmen White Teeth

Coherence is merely a memory
Topic: Odds and ends
The fact that I cannot seem to cobble together two related thoughts this morning is not conducive to the writing of essays. I blame the birds. There are several lovely trees right outside my window, which I usually enjoy having there, but lately they've become popular with a particularly evil variety of bird that likes to start singing loudly somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. I know, because I wake up, since these birds are seriously louder than my alarm clock. And these days, once I'm awake, I'm awake. No rolling over and going back to sleep. Therefore, the brain, she don't work so well this morning. Passing on the random to you:

Geek out: Sitemeter tells me I'm #1 on Google! For the next 15 seconds. For the very specific search phrase "america is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences". I don't know whether to be entertained that I'm #1 at something geeky, or deeply embarassed that I'm obsessed with my site stats. I blame the World Map of Visitors feature for this unseemly preoccupation. I'm such a sucker for maps.

Lost in translation: Engrish and Hanzi Smatter document the entertaining perils of using other languages as design elements. Think hard before you get that kanji tattoo.

Back to the future: The Observer has announced the death of the metrosexual. According to Marian Salzman, advertising VP (surprise) and co-author of the new book The Future of Men, the new masculine ideal is the ubersexual. I'm not sure whether the umlaut is just the Observer being very precise in its usage, or whether it's used by the book's authors, perhaps to impart a certain heavy metal quality to the "new" model of American masculinity. I'm guessing the former, since "fine wines, cigars and red-blooded heterosexuality" aren't exactly rock and roll. I'd love to think that someone at the Observer was having a go at the absurdity of the whole idea by sneaking in a very subtle Spin̈al Tap reference, but that's probably too much to hope for.


Credits: KL for the link to Engrish, Ro for the Observer story, bloody loud birds for disjointedness.

Procrastinating
Topic: Quotidiana

Sitting in the semi-darkness, watching a thunderstorm roll in. I love that I'm on the top floor of the tallest building that's around for blocks. The idea of looking out my window over the rooftops of a city appealled to me long before I was ever in a position to live in a place where that was possible. The chimney sweep scene in Mary Poppins was my favorite as a child, and I was very taken with the idea of living in an attic, like Sara in A Little Princess.

Now, I gravitate toward top floor flats, even if the stairs are awful. Which they're not, here, since there are only 3 storeys to the building, and I still get to look out over the rooftops of all the little houses in my neighborhood, straight out the horizon, where distant flashes of lightening are outlining the edges of the heavy bank of clouds that's creeping in. Looks like it's going to be a spectacular storm.

Flashback
Topic: Whatever
I'll be getting back to work any minute now, but I just took a quick break to read 50 Books, and these posts gave me a flashback to the agonizing process of packing up my books before I moved, and how much I miss my books, and I how I hope that my friends are enjoying the ones that were left in their care.

It is so incredibly weird to me that I have one, tiny, "bookshelf" (actually a CD/DVD rack that happens to work as a bookshelf) that isn't even full. I brought next to no books with me, which was difficult. "These books represent security and home," Doppelganger says, and I can definitely relate to that. I love a public library, and I intellectually accept that it wasn't necessary to bring my entire collection with me, but there's something about having my books on hand that's deeply comforting.

When I go to friends' flats, I find myself contemplating their bookshelves with a deep sense of envy, stemming both from the fact that they have bookshelves (possibly my favorite category of furniture) and that they have many, many books to put on them. I've been slooooooowly re-amassing a collection of second-hand books, but I've been trying to keep my book-buying in check because I know I'll just have to go through another agonizing cull in a year or so.

Although, as Doppelganger says, the idea of getting rid of books is usually more painful than actually doing it. I usually find that once I sit down and start sorting, its not hard to figure out which books I'm just done with. Most notably, in the pre-Australia move, I realized that I was done with Dune and The Lord of the Rings. There was a long period of my life in which I read both series straight through at least once a year. Those days are over. It was strange to put those books in the donation pile without feeling a pang of loss, but when a phase is over, its over.

I was trying to think if there are books I regret getting rid of over my various moves, and I don't think so. Maybe my copy of War and Peace, but I only would've kept that to prove that I had read it, and that didn't seem like sufficient reason to bring it with me from Skopje, since its such a brick of a book. I do miss some of the books that I've left with various friends. Sometimes I wish that I'd kept American Gods, Blonde, The Toughest Indian in the World, and Snake Hips, but at least I can hope that they are, or at least were, being enjoyed by other people who I know love books. Other than that, I think I've kept every book that there's the even the slightest chance that I might want to read again.

Okay, then. Enough with thinking about books, and back to reading them. Which just isn't as enjoyable when I have to take notes. How is it that education manages to take the fun out of reading?

Update: See Antipixel for further reflections on the pain of packing and the comfort of unpacking books. Have a look at the photographs, too - they're gorgeous.