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July 23rd, 2010
07:26 pm - More on Daniel Schorr
Senate historian Donald
Ritchie on the late Daniel Schorr:
What passes for commentary today is almost all opinion,
but Schorr was part of that breed of commentators who dug up
information before they pontificated about it.
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06:47 pm - Dan Schorr
died,
age 93.
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01:33 pm - "Daisy"
Nice video version of the famous "Daisy" ad from the 1964 presidential
campaign. Credited with damaging the Goldwater campaign by making the
candidate seem extremist. Expect to see something like this in 2012 if
Sarah Palin wins the Republican nomination.
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01:45 am - Facebook redux
Gizmodo has several reasons for quitting Facebook. Here's a good one:
"Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for
crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data."
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July 20th, 2010
09:32 pm - Sports "Writing"
Ryan Phillips, in HuffPo, writes on the death of the American sportswriter,
highlighting the loathsome Skip Bayless:
With the new technological advances our world has at its fingertips,
sportswriters have an opportunity never before afforded to them: they
can become famous. Many have taken to the airwaves as guest pundits or
commentators. Guys like Skip Bayless and Jay Mariotti soon realized
that the more outrageous they were, the more they riled up the viewers,
the more belligerent they acted, the more they were asked back. More
appearances equal more fame, more fame equals more money. In short,
they've sacrificed credibility for fame.
Their writing soon began to reflect their on-air personas and became
filled with snarky commentary and outrageous statements. Readers took
notice and in general, no longer take most of them seriously. They now
speak at their audience, not to it. The problem is that as a whole, the
rest of the sports writing world has followed suit.
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09:20 pm - 2666
This morning, on the bus, I finished the fourth section of 2666, titled
"The Part about the Crimes". If it were a standalone novel, which
Bolano at one point intended, I'd think it was the best thing he had
ever written. I say this even though no crimes are solved, no murders
are stopped, none of the characters reach any kind of resolution or
even do much of anything significant. There's just that steady drum
beat of murder against the barren corruption and despair of Mexico.
(Despair may not be the right word. Its not a happy country, though).
Somehow, the investigation of the death of Kelly Rivera was just the
capstone to the horror. Her disappearance is never resolved, the
investigator dies, and it turns out she was really a high priced madame
running a prostitution ring catering to narcos. As such, she was
somehow complicit in the killings. Still, that little bit of narrative,
told from the point of view of Azucena Plata, is the most effective
writing in the whole fourth part. Its a story that stands for all the
stories of all the disappeared women.
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July 17th, 2010
06:10 pm - Plumbing
Got around to reading up on installing basin faucets this morning after I dis some outdoor painting. According to the Bob Vila site, it's not all that hard if you have a basin wrench, which gives extension into out-of-the-way places. I learned the right kind of faucet to buy--an eight-inch widespread faucet where the handles fit directly into the basin surface. It takes me awhile to do this kind of research online as I like to have all the steps in my head before I go to the store. On the way up to Menards I stopped at Half Price, which always surprises me with it's selections. They had a copy of Holy Skirts, for example, the National Book Award nominee from a few years back that went out of print before receiving the nomination. Nobody has that book. I bought Citizen Vince by Jess Walter and Lowboy by John Wray. I had to go to Home Depot for the stuff I needed, spending 115 bucks on the faucet and basin wrench and a couple of sundries. Then, LW called to say she was taking the kids swimming and that I was invited, so I went to Borders and drank coffee. Posted via LiveJournal.app.
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July 15th, 2010
09:01 pm - Thursday, including a rant
July 15 2010
It rained heavily last night around 3.30-4.00 am. I know this because
Emmie woke up and came into our room. I got up, settled her down, and
by that time the cats were up and hungry, so I fed them downstairs. I
set the alarm for 5.30, then stayed in bed until 6.00. I should really
set the alarm for 6.00 anyway, as that gives me enough time in the
summer.
My favorite authors. I'm uncomfortable with the term "author"--its a
legal term, and more loosely an artifact of book marketing, a brand
name as it were. From Barthes, a text is a tissue of quotations, never
truly original. I prefer the term "writer". You may object that this
lumps the novelists in with the writers of office memos and that it
ignores the difficult "creative" work of producing an extended work of
narrative fiction. Isn't there a difference? I don't know. I'm not a
psychoanalyst.
Any way, my favorite writers: from the 19th Century, Hardy, Trollope,
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray. I'd mention Austen, but what's the point?
Everyone knows about Austen. Everyone knows about the Brontes, but I'll
mention them anyway, at least Emily.
Later--Joyce, Pynchon, Nabokov, Burroughs, of course. Hemingway, of
course, the only Nobel winner so far. The Nobel committee tends to get
US literature wrong. Pearl Buck? Sinclair Lewis? John Steinbeck? Why
not give it to Carson McCullers or Kurt Vonnegut? Recent writers I've
been impressed with are John Wray, Ken Kalfus, Jess Walter. Roth should
also make the cut, I'd guess.
Did a little research on a webcomic genre I hadn't looked into much,
the "journal comic", which is basically a day-by-day drawn diary.
Planet Karen is the only one I've looked at, but there are some other
good ones, like The Devils Panties, Overcompensating (which I'd read
without understanding what it was), and Pretty Jeff. The last just had
a nice tribute to the late Harvey Pekar, who died the other day aged
70. "I need to keep telling myself that things don't last forever".
Besides Pekar, recently deceased is Tuli Kupferberg, another one of the
"last of the Beats".
Another piece of used hardware to look at: The NEC Mobile Pro line of
handheld laptops (full size keyboards, almost, a laptop form factor,and
a size midway between a palmtop and a laptop). Ran Windows CE and were
manufactured throughout the 90s.
Our lawyer is drafting a counteroffer on our house. He will probably
have it available Friday pm or Saturday am.
I leave early tonight, and I'm also taking tomorrow morning off in
order to wait for a plumber. That means I'll hang out with the kids and
get to sleep in.
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July 11th, 2010
01:47 pm - WC
Is this the first time two monarchies have contested the WC final? Posted via LiveJournal.app.
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01:31 pm - World Cup
While watching the preliminaries for the WC final match, I felt sad that it was all about to end. Couldn't they just start all over again next week? Posted via LiveJournal.app.
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