At Home He's a Tourist

2008-01-01T14:54:00.000-06:00

Guitar chord tab theme song opening Welcome to the NHK ni youkoso NHKにようこそ Puzzle Round Table Nino

Intro:

Bbmaj7 Cm7 Dm7 Ebmaj7 Bbmaj7 Ebmaj7 Bbmaj7

Ebmaj7
Sukoshi miageta sora dekisugita nichijou
Bbmaj7
Se o mukeru tabi ni tsubuyaku dake
Ebmaj7 Bbmaj7 C7sus4 C7
Doko ni ikeba ii no? Sonna kaoshiteru kimi to

Ebmaj7 Dm7 Cm7 Bbmaj7
Rojiura no kage tokei no hari ga
Ebmaj7 Dm7 Cm7 Bbmaj7 Cm7 Dm7
Tomatta jikan o nurikaete

Emaj7 Bbmaj7 Cm7 Dm7
Sashinobeta ryoute kamiawanai pazuru o
Emaj7 Bbmaj7
Okizari ni shiteta futari deau made
G# Gm7 Cm7 Bbmaj7 G#
Nakushiteta nanika saigo no kakera o
Ebmaj7 Bbmaj7
Torimodoshite arukidasou
Bmaj7 Cm7 Dm7 Ebmaj7

As always, corrections welcome

2007-09-22T15:31:00.001-05:00

I'll still post chord charts and other archivables here, but I've started a new personal blog. Contact me if you want the URL.

2007-09-12T18:36:00.000-05:00

I gave my two weeks' notice today. I'm outta here!

2007-09-07T23:40:00.000-05:00

プールにて puffy amiyumi “swimming pool” “pool nite” chords tab tablature guitar

Fm7 Ebmaj7
真夏のサンタの　小粋なはからいで

Fm7 Ebmaj7 Fm7 Ebmaj7 Edim
裸のまんまの　二人より添うの

Fm7 Bb7 Fm7 Ebmaj7
しぶきおあげて

ゆるんだサンバの　リズムに合わせて
生まれたまんまの　二人の理想の

Fm7 Bb7 Ebmaj7 Edim Fm7 Bb7 Dbmaj7
波をかきわけ　光を浴びた

Ebmaj7 Fm7
ゆらゆらとゆるりと水のなかでもっと

Ebmaj7 Fm7 Gm F#dim Fm Bb7
悩み事人事　水の中の事

しぶきをあげて　光を浴びた

ふわふわとゆるりと　水の中でもっと
体ごとありがと　水の中の事

Ebmaj7 Fm7
トリトン　水の中でずっと
悩み事お仕事　水の泡の底

2007-08-19T15:33:00.000-05:00

Flaming Lips Sound of Failure Guitar Chords Tab

Dm Am7

She's starting to live her life
From the inside out
The sound of failure calls her name
She's decided to hear it out

Gm7 Fmaj7 Gm7 Am7
So go tell Britney and go tell Gwen
Bb C D
She's not tryin' to go against all them
'Cause she's too scared and she can't pretend
Bb C Fmaj7 Bbmaj7
To understand where it begins or ends
Or what it means to be dead
It's just a sound going through your head
Am7 Gm7
Let them go on
Fmaj7 A D

Standing there in the graveyard
While the moon sprays its fireworks in your hair
the sound of failure calls her name
She's decided to hear it out

So go tell Britney and go tell Gwen
She's not tryin' to go against all them
'Cause she's too scared and she can't pretend
To understand where it begins or ends
Or what it means to be dead
It's just a sound going through your head
Let them go on
Where it begins or ends
Or what it's like to be dead
It's just a sound going through your head
Let it go on

2007-08-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

More Studio Ghibli on Veoh! This one is a rendition of Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea," directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro. My conscience is especially clear downloading this because, according to Wikipedia, some copyright issues are preventing this film, which was released a full year ago in Japan, from appearing in the U.S. until 2009. Unfortunately the reviews I've read in the foreign press have been lukewarm, and apparently Hayao himself felt Goro was too inexperienced for the project, but I'll give it a try anyway.
Online Videos by Veoh.com

2007-07-21T11:49:00.000-05:00

Puffy Amiyumi Cosmic Wonder COSMIC Nagaretabi guitar tab chord transcription

Unfortunately, not only is there no PV for this, but I can't even find the romaji lyrics. Readers will have to consult the recording (on the album Spike).

Stanzas:

Fmaj7 Bbmaj7 (there's a few measures between a couple of stanzas where Am replaces Fmaj7)

Am7 Abm7 Gm7

Robot voice section:

Em7 Am7 Cmaj7 Em7 B7
Em7 Am7 Cmaj7 Em7 Edim

Do-do-do-do section

Dm7 Gm7 Bbmaj7 Fmaj7 A7
Dm7 Gm7 Bbmaj7 Fmaj7 Ebmaj7
Dm7 Gm7 Bbmaj7 Fmaj7 A7
Dm7 Gm7 Bbmaj7

Then back to stanza chords

2007-07-13T21:09:00.000-05:00

Puffy Amiyumi モグラライク Mogura raiku Mogura-like Mole-Like guitar chords tab

I'm guessing that they not only do their own choreography but are in charge of wardrobe as well. (Actually, as someone who grew up during the golden era of MTV, I really do appreciate the Lauperesque outfits. Not to mention that animation, which reminds me of DigDug. Looks like Puffy is ready for the inevitable 80s revival.) This is almost too easy to be worth posting, but when I think about how bad I was at figuring out chord progressions when I started playing guitar, I figure the transcription might save a newbie a few minutes.

Power chords, mostly

C D Bb

Mogura wa gangan kono chikyuu wo yasu mazu susumu
Hita sura gashigashi hori susunde umi wo watatte

A Ab G
Soshite futo te wo yasumete wa hoshi wo nagameteiru

C D Bb

C Bb
Bokura mo gangan kono chikyuu de make zuni susumi
C Bb
Mogura ga gashigashi suru mitai ni ryote wo mawasu
A Ab G
Mada mada zenzen shiranai haru kana to kono
A Ab G
Umi wo mitai, hoshi wo mitai zenmai maite
Bb C E
guru guru maite hora mosukoshi ageteke

F C G C
Mada mada mienaiyo
doko nimo mienaiyo
Kangaete shimauyo
F C G Am7 Em C Em C
dakara te wo ugokashitsuzukeyou miyouyo dakara

A Em A Em A Em
D F

F C G C
Dare mo mitenaiyo
dare mo kiitenaiyo
Matchigaete shimauyo
dakara te wo ugokashi tsuzukeyou
Mada mada mienaiyo
doko nimo mienaiyo
Kanga ete shimauyo
F C G Am7
dakara te o ugokashi tsuzukeyou
F C G Am7
Hotte hotte mata hotte
Em F G C
furimukeba michi ga dekitetayo

Moles work busily, never resting, moving through the world
Digging their way through earnestly, crossing seas
And then suddenly they take a break and look up at the stars
We, too, are working busily, moving through the world, never giving in
Moving our hands like the moles digging
I want to dream of a place that I've never seen before
I want to see the stars, wind a spring, wind it round and round and move up a little
We can't see yet, we can't see anywhere
We end up thinking like that, so let's keep moving our hands, let's look
Nobody's watching, nobody's listening
We make mistakes, so let's keep moving our hands
We can't see yet, we can't see anywhere
We end up thinking like that, so let's keep moving our hands, let's look
Dig and dig and dig some more
And when you look back you'll see you've made a road

2007-07-13T20:35:00.000-05:00

Y'all have probably already seen the NYT article on "hip librarians." A librarian on the editorial staff of Touchstone isn't impressed. "Serious library users have the same opinion of hip librarians as serious church users have of hip priests and ministers." Lots of good discussion in the combox on the nature of librarianship in the IT age.

An academic monograph on Kate Bush and Hounds of Love.

I decided against the China job. My initial idea was to go there only long enough to snare a Chinese wife with the lure of American citizenship, but given my track record so far I'm not at all confident I could get a job on my return. My latest idea is to try to get into high school librarianship. Although I'm not sure exactly what that involves (aside from hunting vampires), I would like the summers off.

2007-06-07T10:59:00.002-05:00

I have a job offer to teach English at a university in Hangzhou. Should I accept? Librarianship doesn't seem too interested in me.

Currently reading: Stephen R. Donaldson, The Power That Preserves. His high-flown similes are getting annoying (taken from a random page: "dread seemed to fall on him from nowhere, adumbrate against his heart like the knell of an unmotivated doom.") But curiosity about how this thing is going to end compels me to keep reading.

2007-05-18T22:15:00.000-05:00

Libraries figure prominently in a recent Studio Ghibli DVD release, Whisper of the Heart. (Don't smirk; the original Japanese title isn't nearly as corny.) That a girl would meet her beau by finding his name inscribed on checkout cards warms my bibliophile heart. Unfortunately, a John Denver song figures just as prominently, but if you can get over that obstacle I think you fans of Ghibli and of libraries will appreciate the film. As of this posting, you can watch it all on Veoh. Here's part one:
Online Videos by Veoh.com

And now the obligatory J-Pop transcription:

Keywords: Guitar chords tab Puffy Amiyumi Ai no Shirushi 愛のしるし

Tympani: E B

E F#m B A E
Yawana ha-to ga shibireru kokochi yoi hari no shigeki
Wake mo nai no ni kagayaku sore dake ga ai no shirushi

A B E B C#m
Itsuka anata ni wa
Subete uchi akeyou

A G#7
Sukoshi tsuyoku naru tame ni

C#m F# A F#7 B A
Kowareta bo-to de hitori koide yuku

Yume no naka demo wakaru mekuru meku yoru no fushigi

Instrumental

F# Ebm B C#
E F#m B A E

Tada no omoide to
Kaze ga sasayaite mo

Ureshi naki no takara mono
Nan demo ari souna kuni de tada hitotsu

Yawana ha-to ga shibireru kokochi yoi hari no shigeki
Wake mo nai no ni kagayaku sore dake ga ai no shirushi
Sore dake de ai no shirushi

2007-04-11T21:19:00.000-05:00

In over a month we've received only 4 applications for J.E.'s position--and one of those was in-house. I've heard that most academic library jobs receive over a hundred applications. It's depressing that the only job I could get is somewhere no one wants to be.

But that makes travelling all the more valuable. ACRL: John Waters' luncheon address was predictably tasteless and hilarious. I saw a presentation on federated searching which I think has sold me on the idea. Unfortunately the restaurants in the Inner Harbor area were overpriced and bland (and why do P.F. Chang's waiters all dress like Dieter?), but I hiked 30 minutes to the Mt. Vernon neighborhood for a tasty Indian buffet. The American Visionary Art Museum was also a bit overpriced, but I liked some of the pieces, especially some paintings in Italian Renaissance style featuring traditional religious scenes (Last Judgment, St. Christopher carrying the Christ Child, etc.) with primates in the place of humans. I might never fly American Airlines again, since my flight was delayed 27 hrs.

Then Ft. Worth last weekend--book shopping, Korean food, Japanese exhibition at the Kimbell, and Pablo introducing me to Buffy and Torchwood. Next month it's Dallas for the AMIGOS conference.

Reading: Fritz Leiber, Three of Swords; Mine Yoshizaki, Sgt. Frog (cute and fun but too many panty shots), Kiyohika Azuma, Yotsuba&!.

Keywords: Puffy Amiyumi guitar chords tab Forever

E A E A

(Bud-a-bup-pa-ba)(4x)

E A E A
Who would've thought that I'd find a boy like you

C#m F# B Baug
But when I saw you there I knew,yes I knew

E A E A
That we'd never be torn apart from the start

C#m F# B E
We'd make our first dance last forever (Bud-a-bup-pa-ba)(4x)

Am E
Please don't break my heart before we start this love afair

Am G B
It would make my teary eyes shrunk dry(oh what a guy)

2007-03-10T21:01:00.000-06:00

J.E. is returning to China in June. The Boss entrusted me to post the job description for his position to various library career websites. I asked if it would be okay for me to amend the qualifications to include the requirement that all applicants be single women under 30 years old, under 5'8'' tall, and under 140 lbs., but she didn't think so. Speaking of jobs, I finally was able to google around and find out about the person who took the last job I interviewed for. He's a Ph.D. student in Buddhism, which makes me feel a little better since knowledge of eastern religious was specifically mentioned as a preferred qualification. I'll just assume that was the reason I didn't get the job, not that I did a lousy job presenting myself in the interview.

For Lent this year I'm "detoxing"--no caffeine or alcohol. Actually my motives are as much medical as spiritual, since I'm hoping abstinence might help my insomnia. So far it hasn't.

Cultural Consumption: the first six Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, William Morris The Wood Beyond the World (prettily written but the main protagonists were bland; only the femme fatale witch had any spark), Evelyn Waugh Black Mischief, Woody Allen Play it Again, Sam, Joanna Newsom Ys, Puffy AmiYumi Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi.

More JPop fluff for the search engines:

Keywords: Guitar tab chords Morning Musume Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari 女子かしまし物語

Stanzas, e.g.:

"Mazu wa! Ishikawa Rika" 　OI!
C#m7
Jibun ja sono ki wa nai rashii
F#m7 Gm7 G#7
Sore de mo kanari yuutousei
F#m7 B E C#m7
Honki de kawaii ano ko ni
F#m7 G#7 C#m7
Onna wa JERASHI-
"Ehe"

Choruses:

C#m7
WOW WOW WOW seishun
F#m7 G#7
Iroiro aru sa!
C#m7
Ni san nin tsudottara
F#m7 G#7 C#m7
Kashimashi 　kashimashi

2007-03-04T19:54:00.000-06:00

I quit one of my book reviewing gigs. I want to spend more time on my own research projects, and in any case the assignments of late haven't been too interesting--amateur anti-religious screeds from minor publishers.

Anyone else going to Baltimore for ACRL?

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Do you think the gals do their own choreography?

Keywords: Guitar chords Puffy Amiyumi Toku suru karada とくするからだ

Use power chords at your discretion.

D

A G F# B A D
Tatoeba sainou totemo aru futari wo mikurabeyou
Katahou wa maamaa hitori wa GUU dotchi ga yatowareru
Onna no hito ni kagitta hanashi wa shite nai yo
Otoko no hito ni kagitte urotaeru

B E A D F#
Kibishii soshite yaya-koshii heisei o ikinokoreru no wa
B E D E A
Mita me mo chotto suteki na hatarakimono
D F# Bm D G Gm
Migoto na hito ni narimashou kanpeki ni shimashou
D F# Bm D G
Ima kara BISHItto kitaeyou kono karada
E Bb
Itsuka wa shizumu taiyou yo
Futsuu no yowai bokura ga kamisama ni ataerareta mono wa
Yasashiku soshite joubu na kokoroiki
Migoto na hito ni narimashou kanpeki ni shimashou
Migoto na BODII ni narimashou mou TORIKO ni sasemashou
Nanika to toku na omoi wo suru karada ohana mo mizu nakya shioreru
Saa migoto na hito ni narimashou kanpeki ni shimashou
Ima kara BISHItto kitaeyou kono karada
Itsuka wa shizumu taiyou yo soshite mangetsu ni natte terasu no yo

[Transposition to E at the end left as homework for the reader.]

2007-02-25T14:28:00.000-06:00

I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it for libraries to accept donations. Last week we picked up 50+ boxes of books from a former English professor. I was hoping that it would be a lot of good lit crit, but although I have found a handful of useful things out of the twenty or so boxes I've been through so far, at least 95% of it is unusable--stuff we already have, stuff that would be worthwhile except for being in the form of decaying paperbacks, and stuff that's just rubbish (a forty year old crossword puzzle book, ancient elementary school textbooks, park brochures, a box of National Geographic maps...) The labor costs of my sifting through all of it would seem to outweigh the value of those things we will either keep or sell. On the other hand, it's not as if there's a lot of other projects I'm working on at the moment.

By contrast I'm streamlining my home library by selling on amazon.com. It's interesting to Google the purchasers' names and addresses to see what I can find out about them. A frat boy bought my set theory textbook; a medical researcher from Rio de Janeiro bought Breaking the Spell; a New Age singer from Chicago bought my copy of Part's Passio.

I'm trying the online personals again, but I'm not having any more luck than my first attempt four years ago. Just the obviously fraudulent messages from Russia and Africa.

Keywords: Guitar chords tab Stereolab "Pack Yr Romantic Mind"

Cmaj7
The greater is the beauty
F#m7addb9
The profounder is the stain
D6
Significant of the forbidden
D6sus4
Transgressed in eroticism

F#m7addb9 Em
Eroticism

F#m7addb9=probably not the correct name but I mean [2420xx]
D6sus4=[xx0203]

2007-02-14T17:39:00.000-06:00

The Kenyan successfully transferred. I still think the university would have required an official transcript to be mailed directly to them from our registrar, so I don't think I aided and abetted fraud, but who knows?

Chords - Stereolab "Cybele's Reverie"

Gm7 Fmaj7 Dm7 Cmaj7
matières sensuelles et sans suites
matières sensuelles et sans suites
l'enfance est plus sympathique
l'enfance apporte le magique
que faire quand on a tout fait
tout lu, tout bu, tout mangé
tout donné en vrac et en détail
quand on a crié sur tous les toîts
pleuré et ris dans les villes et en campagne
l'enfance est plus authentique
le jardin au haut portique

Am7 Bbmaj7 Dm7 Cmaj7
les pierres, les arbres, les murs racontent
(la maison, la maison d'autrefois, la maison la maison d'avenir)
et me pénétrera...
et le silence, me pénétrera

2007-02-13T13:07:00.000-06:00

Chords for Puffy AmiYumi - Koge Ga Watashi No Ikirumichi

E Esus4 E D B

E Bm7 C#m F#
Chikagoro watashitachi wa ii kanji

A B
Warui wa ne arigatou ne

A D B
Kore kara mo yorodhiku ne

Mogitate no kajitsu no
Ii tokoro Sou iu koto ni shite okeba

A G#m C#m A B E
Kore kara saki mo ii kanji

F#m B A E
Moshi mo dareka ga fuan dattara
Tasukete agerarenaku wa nai
Umaku iitemo Dame ni nattemo

G#dim F#m A#dim B D B
Sore ga anata no ikiru michi

Moeteru watashitachi wa ii kanji
Ikite iru akashi da ne
Yo no naka ga sukoshi mieta ne
Mogitate no kajitsu no
Ii tokoro
Sou iu koto ni shite okina
Kakudo kaereba
Mata ii kanji

[Harmonica solo]

C#m B A Am E

Sukoshi gurai wa fuan datteba
B D A B
Kore ga watashi no ikru michi

Chikagoro watashitachi wa ii kanji
Warui wa ne arigatou ne
Kore kara mo yoroshiku ne
Mada mada
Koko kara wa ii tokoro
Saigo made mite ite ne
Kuregure mo
Jama shinai de ne
Mogitate no kajitsu no
Ii tokoro
Sou iu koto ni shite okeba
Kore kara saki mo ii kanji

C#m B A Am E
Sore dewa sayounara

2007-02-11T13:26:00.001-06:00

Chords - Puffy Amiyumi "Circuit no Musume"

G6 Gdim Am7
Waratte waratte waratte

D7 G6 Gdim D7
Damatte sasotte ashiratte

G6 Gdim Am7
Sumairu sumairu sumairu

D7 F#dim Em
Shibireru akireru sutairu

Dm /Db /C Cmaj7 /G Gm /F# /F /E Dm
Saakitto de no haritsumeteru kuuki wo
Fm Ebmaj7 Dm G6 Cmaj7
Odayaka ni suru no ga watashi no yorokobi

C
Nezumi iro ni kagayaku asufaruto ga
Otokotachi no tatakai wo matte iru
F Fm C /B /Bb A
Dare yori hayaku kaette kite ne
D7 G6 Cmaj7 Bm7 E7
Watashi no tokoro e onegai

Saakitto ni wa mamono ga sumu kara
Otonashiku saseru no wa
Watashi no miryoku de

Daiji na mashin ga kowarenai you ni
Koronde hone ottari shinai you ni
Asette ensuto kokanaide ne
Watashi ga tsuiteru wa

Nezumi iro ni kagayaku asufaruto ga
Otokotachi no tatakai wo matte iru
Dare yori hayaku kaette kite ne
Watashi no tokoro e onegai

2006-12-19T09:39:00.000-06:00

Taking mondegreens to a whole new level. The Fitty Cent one is the best. Translations in the comments section.

2006-12-16T11:58:00.000-06:00

I think I'll get a cat. How to go about it? I bet a few of my legion of readers are catowners and could advise me. My coworker J.E. is a serial catowner and has simply relied on strays to show up at his doorstep. I haven't seen any unowned cats hanging around my place, but perhaps that's because my neighbor's cats have staked out the territory. On the other hand, I'm hesitant to spend money on one only to find out that it's temperamentally unfriendly.

In other news, I applied for that teaching job in Japan that J.E. used to hold. He thinks I have a couple of things going for me. First, the company seems to like hiring by word of mouth, which is how he got the job himself, and he agreed to write me a letter of introduction to the director. Second, he said the director's homely unmarried daughters have a lot of say in the hiring process and like to keep a "stable" of young single men around.

2006-12-07T07:18:00.000-06:00

The Librarian: Accomplice to Fraud

Kenyan track student comes to the ref desk and asks for whiteout. He paints over some lines on what looks to be an unofficial transcript. Then he asks if we have a scanner. I take him to the media room. "Can you show me how to use this?" I help him make a scan of the document; the whiteout smudge is less evident. "How can I send this by email?" I show him how to attach the file to a Yahoo email message. The "to" address seems to be the track department at a major state university.

So my hypothesis: the kid had a bad semester and is trying to transfer. Oh well, I don't feel too bad since the scheme is half-baked. The state u. will undoubtedly request an official transcript to be sent directly from our registrar's office, so he won't get away with anything.

Has anyone sold books through amazon.com? I'd like to convert some of my review copies into cash.

Read: Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic; Charles McDaniel, God and Money: The Moral Challenge of Capitalism.

Saw: Read or Die, anime about a cute bookworm with telekinetic powers over paper who saves the world from a Bond-style villain. Pretty run-of-the-mill aside from the bibliophilic motif.

The NYT likes Lynch's latest.

2006-12-03T20:24:00.000-06:00

Been going to the mainline Presby church lately. It's a bit too touchy-feely for my tastes--both literally (holding hands at the benediction--yuck) as well as figuratively (sermons designed to stir emotions rather than teach doctrine, delivered by the pastor with artificial fervor). However, they have a semblance of the traditional liturgy, they say the Creed, most of the hymns are standards (did Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence today), and Communion is offered once a month.

The Japanese company my coworker used to teach English for has an opening, and he said he'd write me a letter of introduction (which is how he got the job back when). It's tempting.

Cultural gluttony: The World (B-), Foxbase Alpha (C+), Azumanga Daioh: The Manga (A-).

2006-12-02T19:30:00.000-06:00

A three CD set of outtakes etc. from Tom Waits.

Thanks to Felix for introducing me to Terry Pratchett. The Color of Magic is worthy of a place on my bookshelf next to Wodehouse.

Final Fantasy XII is really slick.

2006-11-28T16:16:00.000-06:00

Books and Culture: A Christian take on rock criticism:

Pop music criticism has grown so insular, full of itself, hipper-than-thou, and, most important, aesthetically disjointed from the thing it claims to examine that we'd best start over—beginning with a rediscovery of the granddaddy of all modern rock critics, Lester Bangs. I took out a subscription to Spin but found the reviews to be pretty worthless, so I concur. But no mention of Christgau? I haven't read Bangs but anyone who raved over Astral Weeks is worth a look.

NYT: Four Mothers of Manga Gain American Fans With Expertise in a Variety of Visual Styles

Japan Times: A native of Idalou and Texas Tech grad, John Toler, West Texan turned Zen abbot, dies. There are some fascinating people in this world.

2006-11-27T14:11:00.000-06:00

New and improved edition of Graphic Classics: H. P. Lovecraft.

2006-11-26T18:16:00.000-06:00

Back from Fort Worth. I found that audiobooks help while away the long hours of driving much better than does music. Castle Roogna and A Spell for Chameleon were nostalgia-inducing, since I read the novels some 25 years ago. Cousin Bette was gripping, but not surprisingly Balzac seems to lose more in abridgement than Piers Anthony. It may be a stretch, but I wondered if C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces owed a little bit to Cousin Bette (ugly envious woman sets out to destroy her beautiful and saintly kinswoman).

Thanksgiving dinner at Pablo's brother's spacious home in the historical district of Tyler. Made the rounds of the DFW Half-Price Books Fri and Sat. They don't have quite the deals they used to--clearance items are now $2 or $3 instead of $1, and those attractive Gollancz sci-fi and fantasy classics volumes they used to sell for $1 are now $5. The most notable item I got was a Dover paperback facsimile of the Kelmscott edition of William Morris' Wood Beyond the World.

This looks like the perfect anime for librarians and bibliophiles. I wonder if Felix also has his mugshot on bookstore walls.

2006-11-21T11:19:00.000-06:00

Jackson won't be directing The Hobbit. Too bad--although I don't think he's a great director, he's better than anyone else they're likely to get for the project. Personally I would like to see Studio Ghibli do an animated version.

2006-11-20T13:33:00.000-06:00

Police arrest Nagano librarian for posing as suicidal student.

"I did it because I was frustrated," Hirawasa was quoted as saying by police.

From the combox:

Frustrated is probably right...
...42 years old...Librarian...nuff said.

2006-11-17T12:06:00.000-06:00

New posthumous Philip K. Dick novel. PW says "Shallow characterization and crude dialogue show a young novelist groping for style," but I'll read it anyway.

2006-11-16T16:24:00.000-06:00

New documentary on D. T. Suzuki. Looks like it will discuss, among other things, his influence on Western beatnik spirituality--Snyder, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Merton.

New Walter Benjamin volume On Hashish.

2006-11-14T21:23:00.000-06:00

For Pablo

Would Luke 3:8 tell in favor of synergism? The principle invoked by John the Baptist seems to be that any state of affairs God could unilaterally bring about (e.g. being a child of Abraham) is not salvific. Our free assent is the only thing God cannot unilaterally bring about, therefore it is required for salvation.

On the other hand, taking the verse literally doesn't make much sense. Despite his omnipotence, God couldn't raise up physical descendants of Abraham from inorganic matter because, by definition, a descendant is generated through the normal biological processes. (Similarly, God couldn't create a genuine dollar bill.) So "stones" and "children of Abraham" must be figurative. Perhaps the stones are the Gentiles who are part of the crowd (e.g. the publicans and soldiers who seek John's counsel a few verses later); the Jews then shouldn't rely on being (physical) descendants of Abraham since God could raise up (spiritual) children of Abraham from the Gentiles. This reading would be more monergistic.

Or maybe the Baptist grabbed his scrotum when he said "these stones."

2006-11-09T23:06:00.000-06:00

Looks like Microsoft is go head-to-head with Google Scholar. Given my cursory browsing of the database, it seems to me Google Scholar has more references, but MS gave me a $5 Starbucks gift card for taking a look, so it wasn't wasted time.

I guess this explains why about 80% of the videos on my favorites list at YouTube are gone. YT was fun while it lasted, but it looks to be going the way of Napster, especially since Google bought it.

2006-11-02T15:22:00.000-06:00

Is it okay for an academic library to purchase mp3's via, say, iTunes, burn them to CD, and make the CD available for listening within the library facilities? We have a lot of classical music box sets and when an individual disc goes missing I'd rather spend a few bucks downloading only those particular tracks rather than purchasing an entire box set as replacement.
Update: iTunes says no. My only other thought is to get the disc from another library by ILL and burn a copy.

2006-10-29T12:59:00.000-06:00

Four in-person interviews, four rejections. Time to resign myself to an eremetical life in a small West Texas town?

2006-09-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

2006-09-27T21:10:00.000-05:00

Too lazy for proper prose, and since it's a road trip post I'll do it Kerouac-style...

Thursday evening pick up brother at Lubbock airport, Chinese buffet (I never noticed they had green tea ice cream before but my brother discovers it by mistake, thinking it to be sherbert), back to Plainview, Friday grab some coffee at the brand-new Starbucks (hot blonde barista with elegant profile), drive through Clovis, Portales (so-so Mexican lunch), and Roswell (kitschy alien-themed signage everywhere), then along the Hondo valley thick with trees winding upwards through hills spotted with juniper and then tall ponderosa pine, (melancholy feeling from the cool autumnal air, the fading afternoon light, the solitude), resort town Ruidoso disappointing (just a block or two of gift shops), over the mountains and into the broad flat Tularosa Basin where sits Alamagordo, Days Inn advertised free internet access but my brother can only get it on his laptop by standing in the hallway, strange that Deutsche Welle is on the cable, eat dinner at tiny, junky Taiwan Kitchen restaurant, onto Hastings where we skim travel guides and debate plans for the morrow, decide on going to Guadalupe Peak and then Carlsbad, wake up early and drive to White Sands Nat'l Monument, a sweep of gypsum dunes glaring brightly in the green and brown landscape of dirt and sage, no entry fee cause half the park closed due to flooding, we walk around a short one mile trail, then leave the park and cruise down a smooth straight highway skirting the missile range (sign warns that delays may occur during testing), the Saturn (4 cylinders) struggles up a mountain pass and then swoops down into Las Cruces, there's a hillside on the left jam-packed with brown adobe houses and hardly a scrap of vegetation, on to El Paso whence I see Mexico for the first time, represented by colorful but dilapidated shanties overlooking the Rio Grande, we keep looking for someplace to eat, if only a McDonalds, but no luck, weird how drastically the highway divides crowded suburbs on the right from open desert on the left, surprised by a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere on 62/180 where we're interrogated and the luggage is sniffed at by a dog (a light says security alert is "high"), drive to Guadalupe Nat'l Park (we're hungry and we're thrilled to see that sign at the little cafe in Salt Flat says "open", but when we turn around someone pops out and turns it over to read "closed"), the usually dessicated Salt Flat is adorned with a glassy lake reflecting the mountains rising in the background, we hike for three or so hours up the side of the mountain but hunger, fatigue, and fading light cause us to quit before we reach the top, we head back down and drive off to Carlsbad, check into the Motel 6 (internet access works here) and look up a local pizzeria where we get a good big homemade thin crust supreme and some New Belgium ale, oddly a faculty member from my university walks in, but I've been wrong about that sort of thing in the past (the first time I saw Felix at BU I thought he was someone from my high school) so I don't approach him (later I confirm that it was him), then to the local Hastings (a modest oasis of culture in small southwestern towns) where we look at used CDs, next day long boring drive through flat scrubby SE NM to Lubbock, a busy Thai place for lunch, CD shopping (I get Dave Brubeck and the Beatles), Little Miss Sunshine (weak, tasteless attempts at humor, a sickly child of Squid and the Whale (dysfunctional family) and Sideways (depressing western road trip)), and a Japanese steakhouse for dinner (which has the most open space I've ever seen in a restarant) then back home, next morning back to Lubbock for pancakes and then to the airport.

2006-09-18T20:15:00.000-05:00

The car problem turned out to be simply a used-up battery. After they fixed it the garage called and said "We got your lil' car all ready to go," which reminded me of the time I went to a Calvinist dinner party and someone said "There's a tiny green car in the driveway that's blocked me in; could whoever owns it let me out?" I guess it's true that in a West Texas town where the F-250 is king, a Saturn SL-1 is unusually diminutive, but obviously these people haven't heard of the Smart Car. Maybe when Smart cracks the U.S. market I'll get one and draw even more attention to myself.

We have a Starbucks! Big-city liberals have the luxury of sniffing at corporate chains, but here they've been a boon. Wal-Mart didn't replace thriving, locally-owned department stores; it allowed us not to have to go to Lubbock for a rice cooker or a hard drive. Chili's, as mediocre as it is, is the only place within 60 miles we can get a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. And Starbucks will be our first coffeeshop. An IHOP is being built, too, which sounds like a ridiculous thing to get excited about but indeed is a frequent topic of conversation.

I took a sick day. This cold has been ideal, really; serious enough to warrant staying home, but not so bad that I couldn't get in a lot of reading, prayer recitation, and guitar practice. The Illearth War has improved now that the narrative has swung back to Covenant and Elena's quest. The battle stuff in the middle section was getting too tedious, but perhaps that's just an idiosyncratic reaction; I read fantasy for its otherworldiness, not for the sort of accounts of large-scale conflict I could get by reading military history.

2006-09-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

Perfect weather, but otherwise it wasn't such a great day. I'm coming down with a head cold, and in the parking lot of the grocery store (where I had gone to stock up on soup, OJ, and Nyquil) my car refused to start. I should probably feel grateful, at least, that I could find a wrecker on a small-town Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow, if I'm at all coherent, I'll need to call around to get the car fixed, since my brother is flying into Lubbock on Thursday and we're planning to go to NM for the weekend.

Got some reading done, at least: Stephen R. Donaldson, The Illearth War, the second volume in the Thomas Covenant series of fantasy novels. I'm not enjoying it as much as the first installment; more battle scenes and less poetic descriptions of the Land's beauty, plus Donaldson's penchant for ridiculously high-falutin' similes is getting out of hand. Still has its moments, though, and High Lord Elena is a very appealing character. Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain, volume one of his journals. Intimidating.

2006-09-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

David Horace Harwell, Walker Percy Remembered: A Portrait in the Words of Those Who Knew Him (2006)--This slight collection of reminiscences didn't shed any light on Percy's art or thought, but it did modify the impression I had of the man as aloof to the point of being practically eremetical. I was surprised to discover that he was involved in civil rights activism in his adopted hometown of Covington, LA, even creating a credit union to serve the financial needs of blacks. He was also a member of various social circles--supper clubs and reading groups, for instance. Unfortunately some of the interlocutors spend as much time talking about themselves as about Percy. The most interesting interview is, not surprisingly, that with Shelby Foote, who reveals among other things that he and Percy patronized whorehouses in their youth. For Percy fans only.

2006-09-12T21:58:00.000-05:00

There's a YouTube copycat which has the advantage of allowing downloads. Just in time, too, cause TV Tokyo is starting to get their stuff yanked from YT. They'll do the same with Veoh, I imagine, but not before I'm able to save the clips to my drive. Normally I'm a stout defender of IP rights, but in this case since I don't have the option of watching the programs in the normal way, I don't feel too bad about pirating. Avast ye scallawags!

2006-09-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

They wandered in the wilderness, in a solitary way: they found no citie to dwell in.--Ps. 107:4

Whether "citie" be taken literally or as metaphorical for the Church, this verse is sadly applicable to me right now. I was quickly rejected after a long-distance interview with a library in one of the world's major cities. Another application sent in over a month ago to another metropolitan library has so far been fruitless. As for church shopping, this monring I tried a Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) congregation that one of our student workers goes to. They meet at a building owned by Pentecostals, so the decor was appropriately tacky: shag carpeting, cushy chairs up on the dais, a holographic picture of Jesus stuck to the pulpit, patriotic posters with images of flags and bald eagles, a drum kit in the corner. The Disciples congregation consists of only a handful of extremely friendly people (perhaps a little desperately so). The service: a few hymns, some scripture readings, intercessions, and a sermon in which the pastor rejected the Markan pericope with the Syro-Phoenician woman. ("It is not fit to give the children's bread to the dogs.") Doesn't fit the character of Jesus as we know it from the rest of the Gospels, he reckoned. On the other hand, perhaps if it is historical it shows just how human Jesus was, subject to the prejudices of his time. How much God and how much man is Jesus? The pastor confessed ignorance. The Council of Nicea, in which Jesus was declared fully God and fully man, was a political maneuver designed by Constantine to bring unity to the Empire. Oh, and communion using grape juice and a dinner roll.

I won't be back.

2006-08-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

Jobs

Speaking of the "Endless Searche" (see earlier post) I found out yesterday that a job I applied for in December, and interviewed for in March, has now been filled. Not that I was informed directly, of course--I noticed during a periodic check on the library's web site that a new staff member was listed in the position. I guess it's possible that a rejection letter was sent and lost in the mail, but since the interview process was disorganized from the very beginning I don't think that's the explanation. (In fact, since the chair of the search committee admitted during the interview that she hadn't read my CV (!), I suspect I wasn't ever their first choice.) I wouldn't have been able to take the job even if offered to me, so it's no big deal, but as Gilman says a little courtesy would be nice.

Guitar

Now that OLGA is dead it's up to individual webmaster-guitarists to post transcriptions to their own sites and hope that they show up on Google searches. With that in mind, here are a couple I've come up with recently:

Guitar chords/tab for Stereolab, "Our Trinitone Blast":

Capo II

C#5

C#maddb5* E5 F#5 C#5

*C#maddb5=[x4625x] (not sure about the nomenclature)

Guitar chords/tab for "Unionbusting," Franz Bruno as performed by Jenny Toomey

Fmaj7 Bbmaj7
I negotiated
in good faith and waited
you proposed a contract
no more human contact
Dm Am7 Bbmaj7
I thought I held the cards but I was wrong
Dm7b5 Gdim Bbmaj7
because you've been using
Am7 Bbmaj7
unionbusting tactics all along

[as above]
you're too enterprising
for collectivizing
deadlocked on our summits
while production plummets
my bargaining position seemed so strong
ah, but you've been using
Gm7 Bbmaj7 A7
unionbusting tactics all along (la la la la...)

Cm Abmaj7
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill
Fm Bb7 Ebmaj7 G7
chained up to the factory gate
he said, "If labor has the will
capital must capitulate"
Cm
but the moment my attention drifts
Fm
your scabs start working double shifts
Bbm7
and when you send in troops and tanks
Csus4 C
I may break ranks

I'm no Jimmy Hoffa
make a counter-offer
I'll supply embraces
Fmaj7 Am/E Bbm6
on a strictly freelance basis
and I won't sing another protest song
you were
treacherous while I was trusting
now our chains of love are rusting
and you've been using
unionbusting tactics all along

I just want the right to work for your love

2006-08-04T20:24:00.000-05:00

Cultural Gluttony July (ultracondensed)

Books: E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros--Eddison's Renaissance prose is beautiful, his Renaissance value system less so. Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul's Bane--Exciting fantasy which plops a cynical Moorcockian antihero into a lyrical Tolkienesque universe. Agnes de la Gorce, Saint Benedict Joseph Labre--Sober hagiography (I don't see that as an oxymoron) of an Enlightenment-era Frenchman who embraces extreme poverty as a hobo visiting pilgrimage sites across Europe. This sort of outwardly useless life doesn't make much sense without a Catholic belief in the treasury of merit, so the book left me cold.

Flix: The New World--The John Smith/Pocahantas story. Lots of beautiful shots of Virginia, some good old-fashioned noble savagery ("these people do not know greed or envy," says Smith of the Indians), a lot of mumbled monologues drowned out by James Horner's swelling tone poems (and what is audible is remarkably hokey coming from the pen of a former MIT philosophy prof, e.g. "His love flows through me like a river"), Jewel Kilcher's cousin in a leather bikini, minimal plot. A Nun's Story--Audrey Hepburn as a beautiful Belgian nun who has problems with the vow of obedience while serving as a medical missionary in the Congo. Competent, but I preferred Black Narcissus. Don't Drink the Water--Woody Allen revisits one of his sixties comic plays--pretty funny except for Dom Deluise's hammy performance. To Have and Have Not--Fun, minor-league Casablanca with Bogey and Bacall giving off sparks. Dark Passage--Bogey and Bacall have a lot less charm in this noir yarn. Merton: A Film Biography--Done in the 80s, so doesn't mention the later-revealed love affair between Merton and the nurse, but features interesting interviews with the likes of the Dalai Lama and some famous beatnik poet I can't remember now, plus some audiovisual of the man himself.

Tunes: Horace Silver, Song for my Father, The Jody Grind, Serenade for a Soul Sister--catchy without being trivial. Herbie Hancock, Best of the Blue Note Years--maybe a little too mellow--there's even a flugelhorn in there--but well-written nonetheless.

2006-08-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

Jobs

An academic librarian advises hiring committees not to drag out the process into an "Endless Searche" lest their desired candidates get offended and take a job elsewhere:

Few recent Ph.D.'s searching for faculty jobs would reject a tenure-track offer out of resentment over how the search process was handled. But academic librarians are in a seller's market and may be able to afford that luxury. [!!!] A good academic librarian might not think twice about turning down an offer, since a move elsewhere is not only possible but will almost certainly come with a raise and an increase in prestige and responsibility.

Methinks Dr. Gilman's perspective is one-sided. After all, as far as I can tell he got a plum job at Yale straight out of library school. Or maybe the problem is with me not being a good academic librarian. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I was talking to J.E., my coworker who taught English in China, about the possibility of my doing the same. He said his Chinese wife recommended I do it. I asked why. Because, he said she said, I'd pick up a wife easily, being the sort of guy Chinese women would find very handsome. Presumably that means more than "having an American passport," but I didn't want to inquire further into her rationale. Anyway, sounds interesting.

2006-08-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

So if a rejection letter informs you of another opening in the same institution, is that mere professional courtesy or a sign that they're interested?

2006-07-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

Perhaps even in disciplined Japan there are unruly library patrons.

2006-07-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

In my ALA post I forgot to mention that I saw the latest version of the documentary work-in-progress The Hollywood Librarian. At a previous conference (maybe ARCL 2005 or TLA 2004) the producer had shown a very entertaining montage of clips from movies featuring librarians--this is where I first heard of Party Girl. This year's footage consisted mostly of interviews with librarians and MLS students, so it seems the focus of the documentary has shifted somewhat. It should still be interesting (the Busby-style book cart choreography was funny) though blatantly propagandistic, intended to smother the viewer in warm fuzzies about librarianship.

Speaking of which, the next time you're in the mood for a six hour Italian miniseries, check out The Best of Youth. It chronicles the lives of two brothers from the mid-60s to the present. One meets his wife while rescuing items from an inundated library, and the other has an affair with that rarest of types, the beautiful, fashion-conscious young librarian (Maya Sansa, pictured at right)--although she later drops librarianship for photojournalism, so perhaps the movie isn't a complete victory in the fight for an appealing cinematic representation of librarians.

2006-07-14T15:25:00.000-05:00

The beginning of the end for academic library collection development? Rice University Revives its Press in Digital Model. Henceforth all RUP titles will be open access, freely available online. Maybe it's time to for me to start looking for ESL positions in China. Or am I being too pessimistic?

2006-07-09T20:45:00.000-05:00

ALA was better than I expected. Although New Orleans was predictably muggy, I enjoyed wandering around the French Quarter, which (Bourbon Street aside) was less tacky than I remembered from trips taken there with my family back in the 80s. I found some good stuff at the used book stores, including a mint condition copy of the Liber Hymnarius for $10, 2 out of 4 volumes of the Latin Breviary for only $8 a piece, and Conversations With Walker Percy--it's nice shopping for used books in a Catholic town. Speaking of which, Mass at St. Louis Cathedral was pleasant, although I find it annoying that Catholic congregations never seem to use the service music actually found in the missalette. Maybe that's their way of detecting Protestant interlopers. The cantor was a beautiful college-age woman, though, not the stout matron with cropped hair and polyester jacket who usually does the job at Catholic churches.

Although I didn't see much hurricane damage, it was evident that New Orleans still hasn't completely recovered. The shuttle service at the airport was understaffed and disorganized, leading to long delays. Some of the restaurants I planned to patronize turned out to be closed. Many French Quarter establishments had "Help Wanted" signs in their windows.

The conference itself was fairly informative. I attended sessions on collection assessment and learned about some interesting tools, including GeoLib, a database of demographic information for library districts across the country.

In the airport shuttle I overheard two women complaining about patriarchy in the RC Church, and walking to the convention center two young (white) hipsters complained about "white privilege." ALA...

The job search is depressing. The last three interviews have been fruitless, and my last four resumes haven't even merited rejection letters.

2006-06-04T15:55:00.000-05:00

The Story of Qui Ju (Zhang Yimou, 1992)--Gong Li as a grimy, stoic, overtly pregnant peasant, bundled up against the northern Chinese winter, suffers about as drastic a loss of sexiness as did Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich. But no matter; 2046 was a boring movie despite her being all dolled up, and contrariwise she here plays a highly sympathetic character despite her lack of glamour. There's a wry humor in her humble but dogged ascent up the bureaucratic ladder, seeking redress for a mild, indeed comical, injustice suffered by her husband at the hands of the village chief. As in the director's later Not One Less, the character's quest leads her from the sticks to the big city, giving Yimou occasion to compare old and new China, generally to the disadvantage of the latter. The stinger of an ending reinforces this view; the impartial machinery of justice ends up disrupting the web of personal relationships necessary for survival in a small village. The style of the movie is appropriately modest for its social-realist theme, abstaining from the high-flown cinematography and symbolism of Yimou's earlier tragedies and later martial-arts epics. Oh, and the wide-bottomed westerner you see in the Xi'an street scene was a friend of my coworker's, who taught English there. A-

2006-06-03T02:57:00.000-05:00

Abroad He's a Tourist

I'll try to be a more frequent blogger from now on. (You're forewarned, RSS subscribers.) To kick things off, here's a belated, hastily written, mostly uneventful travelogue. You may wish to scroll through to see the pics, though.

Friday 4/14--Drive to FW. Attend Good Friday choral services at nearby Methodist church with Pablo's parents, Pablo himself putting in late hours at his corporate job. (I love the non-profit sector!)

Saturday 4/15--Wake up 4:00 am. Pablo drives me to airport. On the flight to O'Hare a Chinese-American woman and Shanghai native goes through my Frommer's guide and marks her recommendations. Meet up with brother in the terminal. 13 1/2 hr flight to Shanghai.

Sunday 4/16--Land in the afternoon at shiny new Pudong International Airport. Immigration and customs lines are blessedly short. After immigration I find a conveniently located Citibank ATM, from which I withdraw 2,400 RMB ($300). Exiting customs, my first experience of China is unsettling: we have to walk a winding gauntlet of railings against which are pressed throngs of people staring eagerly at the arriving passengers. Perhaps some of them are friends and family, but many of them are definitely transportation providers hungry for a fare. Some shove cards in our faces, some follow us for a short distance after entering the lobby, making their sales pitch in broken English. (This rite of passage sets a precendent for the rest of the trip.) We wave them off and find our way to the Maglev train station.
There's a big group of high school kids in blue blazers, but they're shunted off in another line and we can enter the platform area immediately. Waiting for the train, some old folks from the provinces (I'm guessing) examine the rails and talk in voices raised so loudly that they would seem almost angry. When the train finally arrives there is no polite, orderly queueing up; the crowds shove their way in, cutting in front of others, and by the time we less aggressive Americans get on board there are only two seats left, next to a family of Spaniards. The train ride is smooth and brief, peaking at 430 km/h.

The Maglev stops at a Metro station, where we struggle trying to figure out the card dispenser. Finally we get it to work and take the subway. The cars are clean, and inside there are plasma TVs showing advertisements--I'm surprised at this symptom of consumerism, but mesmerized by an ad for a digital camera in which a sexy leather-clad woman prances around the city. We get off at the People's Square station next to the Yangtze Hotel, where we're staying, near the famous Nanjing Lu pedestrian mall. Check in--the hotel staff, all attractive young women in uniform, know enough English to get us settled in. Watch a little TV, including the faintly propagandistic English-language CCTV9 (all week they'll be vaunting China's improvements in intellectual property rights enforcement, in connection with President Hu's visit to the U.S.) and CCTV11, all Chinese-opera, all the time.

As night falls we decide to walk the famous Nanjing Lu and find something to eat. The crowds and the neon lights are impressive, but the shops are uninteresting and every hundred feet or so we're harassed by pimps, prostitutes, fake-watch salesman, waiters, etc., whose English consists of "Hello" and the name of their product or service. ("Hello, massage," "Hello, sex," "Hello, Rolex watch," "Hello, coffee and beer.") An unpleasant experience. We eventually head back to the less crowded western part of Nanjing Lu, take a side street which a neon-inscripted arch proclaims as "Lie Fallow Street," and find a restaurant with invitingly bright lighting and decor (yellow tablecloths, red paper lanterns). We're a bit put off by the fact that the waitresses hover over our shoulders while we peruse the menu, especially given the fact that it takes us a while to figure out exactly what is being portrayed in the small, fuzzy photographs. (We pass on the goose claw.) The prices are so low we figure the portions must be tiny, so we order three dishes for the two of us and are shocked at the enormous quantities when they arrive. Plus big 650ml Tsingtaos were only a buck and a half. Beef and noodle stew with lip-numbing Sichuan peppercorn, mustard greens, something else. Head back to the hotel.

Mon 4/17--We devote the morning to the Bund area, the strip of colonial buildings along the Pudong river. To get there we walk on Hankou Lu, parallel to but more workaday than Nanjing Lu. Traffic is chaotic, crossing the street can be perilous, the boundaries between sidewalk and road, and between lanes in the road, are not completely respected, and a variety of vehicles share the street: cars, buses, scooters, bicycles, pedicabs, pedal-powered and even hand-drawn carts. A man follows us for about a block offering to shine my brother's scuffed-up boots. We arrive at the Bund and look at the buildings for a little bit, then cross the river using the kitschy underground "sightseeing tunnel" which tries to dazzle with lasers, neon, strobe lights, mirrors, dry ice, and writhing wind sock stick figures, enjoyed from the glass bubble of a futuristic tram. We walk a few blocks, fending off the usual scammers, to the Pearl Tower, a Space-Needle sort of attraction. Choked with tourists, including hundreds of schoolgirls in identical uniforms, it takes us probably twenty minutes to get to the elevator and up to the observation deck. But it's worth it, after all, for the great views of the skyline, including the gleaming new skyscrapers of the Pudong Development.

From the Bund we walk south to Nanshi, i.e. Shanghai's "Old Town." (It ends up being a lot longer of a hike than appeared on the small Frommer's map of the neighborhood; in fact, all the walking we did on this trip probably explains why I lost six pounds despite eating stir fry and drinking beer every day.) Nanshi is a lot like Albuquerque's Old Town, or the historical quarter of Prague--beautiful old buildings occupied by gift shops.

Our first stop is a hotel restaurant recommended by Frommer's, which we find only after walking the entire length of Nanshi down a narrow alley and backtracking (not the first time this would happen, given our lack of Chinese.) It ends being on the very street corner where we entered Nanshi in the first place. There, in a spacious and elegant dining room we have the recommended speciality, the "Eight Treasures Chicken" and a side dish with a similarly florid name I can't remember now. My brother says that a table full of old Chinese behind me stares at us the enitre meal.

After lunch we walk around the area. Besides the gift shops selling silks, name seals, dolls, reproductions of old Shanghai advertising posters, copies of the Red Book in various languages, etc., there is a famous teahouse in the middle of a pond--but my brother, disliking hot tea, isn't interested. We also visit a temple which had this curious deity on display behind glass.

I also see this--although Texas is DQ country, I don't expect to find it offered here anytime soon.

In the afternoon we make the long hike back to the hotel. After kicking back and watching more bad Chinese TV, we decide to check out some nearby multilevel department stores, but are disappointed to find them far inferior to their Japanese counterparts. In the last one we decide to eat, but the food court on the top floor is nearly deserted. Only two the restaurants are open, and the hostess of one, as soon as she see us approach, rushes up with an open menu and urges us toward her establishment, "Me & Joe." Since their next-door rival had an unappealing name like "Herb World" or something like that, we acquiesce. "Me & Joe" offers western food in a cafe setting, small tables and plush chairs. We get some pizzas which turn out to be only mediocre. The waitress comes out with a carrot cake and explains in pretty good English that it is compliments of the chef, who also wants to know if we thought the food was "delicious." Being polite, and also not wanting to be ungrateful for the free dessert, we assent.

Tues 4/18--Today we devote to the Shanghai museum, which the travel guides recommend highly. Unfortunately we don't find it to be very interesting. There is a nice little collection of Buddhist statuary, but the pots, scrolls, furniture, and coins leave us bored. However, it is interesting to see, and in some cases smell (French) the mix of nationalities among the visitors. We also purchase souvenir T-shirts in the gift shop, so the museum fulfills one very important purpose in any vacation (especially since we don't see any other reasonably tasteful T-shirts for sale during the rest of the trip). And on our walk to the museum we are privileged to see a political dissident hauled off, surely an essential part of any China tour. A middle aged man stands under a flagpole in front of some sort of government building and unfurls a homemade banner with a hand painted message. Immediately the passersby stop and stare as police rush up to him and lead him away. I consider taking a snapshot of the proceedings but I fear that my camera will be confiscated, or worse.

In the afternoon we follow Frommer's suggested walking tour of the "French concession," which also turns out to be a bit dull. It's mostly a sleepy residential neighborhood with the occasional mildly interesting colonial home. The Xintiandi area, in which some of these homes have been converted to pricy eateries, was nothing special either--and the Paulaner beer garden was charging $8 per glass! We also spend over an hour walking around trying to find a Communist Poster Museum listed in one of the travel guides, to no avail. So we resignedly trudge back to the People's Square area and take a late lunch at our standby restaurant, ordering the famous "squirrel fish":

In the evening we don't have much to do, so we take the metro out to Pudong to check some more shopping malls that Frommer's recommended, but they again fail to impress. However, walking from the metro station to the malls, we see another typical Chinese event: cops chasing off streetside vendors of counterfeit western goods. The vendors are prepared for the bust: they simply lift the corners of the blanket on which their wares rest and tote the bundle off to another street corner a few blocks away, where they set up shop again. There's even music to enliven the shopping experience, provided by a battery-powered cannon-style speaker tied to the back of a bicycle.

In one of the shopping malls we get hungry and eat at "Belinda's," which looks somewhat similar, though larger and busier, to "Me & Joe." The language barrier proves difficult however. When we approach the hostess she points to the pizza section on the menu and makes negative gesture. No pizzas? Fine with me, after the experience at Me&Joe. After we're seated a waitress arrives and points to the pizza section and says something in Mandarin. We shrug. Eventually in frustration she gets a waiter who knows a little English. "One pizza," he says over and over. Huh? We persistenly point to the pasta dishes we want, which seems to be problematic but eventually the waiter gives up the "one pizza" mantra and walks off. I'm still not sure what the problem was, but we got our pasta, which ended up being about $1.50 a plate!

In sum, probably our least entertaining day in China except perhaps for the last.

Wednesday 4/19--Today we take a train into the famous lakeside city of Hangzhou. The hotel staff bought our train tickets for us the day before--well worth the service fee they chared. The bellhop hails us a cab, which takes us to an underground parking beneath the train station. Some guys in blue shirts with badges around their necks grab our luggage as soon as the cab stops, drag it to a booth, ask to see our tickets, and then demand 150 RMB. We try to figure out the reason for this charge but the only English word they know (apparently) is "Pay!" A German tourist comes up and pays so we ask him what is going on. He says something about tickets, so we figure this is legit and pay up as well. The guys take our luggage and lead us up an escalator and through a security checkpoint to a crowded waiting area, where they hang around with us for an hour until boarding. At this point we've figured out that these guys are merely coolies and that we got ripped off--probably the taxi driver got a kickback too. Nevertheless, they did provide us a convenient service, leading us through the mob onto the correct car and seat, talking to a fellow passenger to switch seats with my brother (since the hotel had not got us tickets right next to each other), and hefting our luggage into the overhead rack.

On the 2 1/2 hr. train ride there are other money-making ploys. Aside from the snack and drink carts, there is a sales pitch by a stewardess talking into a bullhorn, apparently for Hangzhou tour groups, and then another stewardess spends fifteen minutes demonstrating the fun you can have with Rubik's snakes! Amazingly, she sells a few. I just look at the scenery, which includes square miles of identical, newly erected apartment buildings apparently in the middle of nowhere. My brother says that a Chinese worker told him that the "company town" is alive and well in China--monuments to Wal-Mart money.

Arriving in Hangzhou, we get a taxi to our hotel, the appropriately named West Lake Hotel, across the street from the northern shore of said lake. After settling in, we decided to take a walk along the park on the northeast edge of the lake. The weather is perfectly temperate, the lakeshore is lush and leafy, and though the park is crowded with people, there aren't any annoying scam artists harassing us. There is a sort of impromptu festival atmosphere, with small clusters of people here and there gathered around a fierce Chinese chess match, a folk concert of singing and fiddle playing, an exhibition of sword play, or a heated but friendly debate between two elders. I also see what may be the most luxurious Starbucks in the world. We stop to look around a quiet temple. Walking back to the hotel through a neighborhood modeled after the aforementioned Xintiandi, we stop by a swanky-looking restaurant, the "Crystal Jade something-or-other." I order a local speciality, "West Lake Sweet and Sour Fish," which is pungent with the smell of vinegar, a real turn-off for my olfactorally hypersensitive brother. The Chinese are not respecters of privacy, and as I am reading the bilingual food section of Frommer's, I feel a presence over my shoulder and find that four of the waitresses are gathered behind me, fascinated to see what Chinese dishes the book recommends. One of them tries out some English on me. "My name is [Linda?]." I say "Hello, Linda" and they think my pronunciation of that name is hilarious, and the others taunt her with it long afterwards.

After we get back to the hotel I fell asleep ridiculously early.

Thur 4/20--After a nice breakfast in the hotel, we hike around the lake. At the entrance to a causeway there are some people hawking tour van rides, and one old woman seemed to be wanting to sell us tickets on the city bus, but once we get on the causeway we leave that behind.
A long walk and we arrive at some tour boats, which take us to a series of little islands in the lake with pavilions and gardens on them. On the first and smallest of these there are a couple of gift shops (surprise, surprise!) with salespeople tootling on pennywhistles. The language barrier proves a problem when we can't figure out which boat to get on to get to the other end of the lake, so we end up going back to the beginning. What's worse, we share this boat with a tour group, and the leader bellows into a microphone connected to a speaker on her belt pointed directly at my ear. China is by far the noisiest country I've ever been to.
Upon disembarking we continue walking along the lake, towards a pagoda on the southeast shore. Along the way we cut our way through a tour group of old folks in identical red baseball caps, and three young joes from the hinterland are astounded to see westerners and urged me to have their pictures taken with me--so maybe at this moment I'm displayed on someone's mantlepiece in Inner Mongolia.
It's a long walk to the pagoda, and I am annoyed that we hadn't rented a bike or some other form of transportation, but eventually we arrive and hike up to the top for a attractive view of the lake and environs.
Tired of walking, we take a taxi from the pagoda to Hangzhou's Qing Hefang Historical Street, which turns out to be just a smaller version of Shanghai's Nanshi. We grab lunch at a random place across from an Irish pub housed in some colonial-style building. The waitress shakes her head when we point to Tsingtao on the menu, so we end up with an undistinguished local brew. The tofu-wrapped spring rolls are nothing special either. We decide to hoof it back to the hotel rather than take the taxi, just to see what can be seen. Some sort of big event with tents, a giant inflatable cartoon waterdrop, kids in identical T-shirts. (My brother's coworker, seeing a photo of the affair, surmised that it was somehow connected with the '08 Olympics.) Not much seems to be of interest as we head up Yan'an Lu, but we stop into a Carrefour, sort of a Super Wal-Mart, to ogle at the weird stuff in the meat and fish department--yard-long eels, bundles of dried ducks. I also buy some fine alcohol and tea--with the friendly but aggressive prompting of some of the staff. (It's hard to browse shops in China without getting the hard sell.)
For dinner, we walk along the causeway again to a restaurant Frommer's recommended, where we have beggar's chicken, baked in clay-caked newspaper and plastic bag. We are the spectacle of the dining room when the waiter comes out and cuts open the charred package for the foreigners. Again the waitress shakes her head when we try to order Tsingtao--is it a Hangzhou ordinance that no Tsingtao will be served on Thursdays? The walk back along the causeway that evening is beautiful, with the lights of pavilions and tea houses reflected on the lake and the leaves of the trees glowing from floodlights shining beneath them. Unfortunately I can't get a good picture without a tripod.

Fri 4/20--We take the train to Suzhou, famous for its classical gardens and its canals. Again we rely on the hotel staff to get our tickets for us--although there is some worry on Thursday because at late as 5 p.m. we are told that the tickets would be "late," and that "maybe" we could pick them up before the office closed at 6:00, all of which sounds ominously like Asian face-saving excuses. But in the end all is well. Suzhou is back towards Shanghai, so we see the same scenery but we don't fortunately have to sit through the same sales spiels. Walking out of the Suzhou train station, we see what my brother later describes as a "third world scene": noisy masses of shabbily-dressed people gathered outside the station, and across the road, a row of grimy buildings. A driver hounds us to employ his services, but forewarned by the travel guide we decline and flag a passing cab to get to our hotel. After checking in, we walk to the nearby "Master of the Nets" Garden, but again the map is too simplified and we overshoot it. When we finally find it, it's a bit of a disappointment; though highly recommended by the travel guides, it's small and kind of drab. The street we walk along, though, is interesting for being lined with traditional Chinese architecture, and there's an unusual amount of green (compared to Shanghai, anyway). I stop into a convenience store to buy an umbrella because I had seen on the news that rain was predicted for the area. Indeed, about ten minutes later it comes down in buckets. When we finally make it back to the hotel we change into dry clothes and watch TV until the rain lets up. We walk to the Suzhou "gourmet" street, a restaurant-lined block in a larger pedestrian mall built around the "Temple of Mystery." We look for a restaurant recommended by the travel guide but after a half hour of futile searching we stop into a lively-looking establishment with a big screen TV broadcasting a soccer match. We get "golden fragrance tofu," which my nose immediately recognizes as what the Taiwanese more forthrightly call "stinky tofu," and a fatty block of glazed pork. After dinner we browse a bookshop (but no foreign language titles) and a department store before walking back to the hotel.

Sat. 4/21--More gardens. We trek south and, after crossing the river and crossing back, then swinging a left down a narrow street, past a pungent food market, we make it to the pagoda and garden. The grounds are spacious and well-manicured, and the 9th-century pagoda fulfills the same function that cathedral bell towers did in Europe--providing an apprehensive climb up a steep, narrow staircase for a panorama view of the environs. Hiking around the central city, we visit three other gardens, crowded with the usual tour groups. The first one is the nicest, with musicians in traditional garb playing classical instruments. For dinner we finally find the restaurant that was recommended by the travel book--the problem was that the sign over the door read right to left, something the book didn't mention. But it's a disappointment--the food was expensive (by Chinese standards) and bland (by anyone's standards).

Sun. 4/22--Final day in China, and it turns out to be a bit of an anticlimax. We take the short train ride from Suzhou to Shanghai. After checking back into the Yangtze Hotel, we take a long hike south towards the Longhua Temple, where there is supposed to be a festival. On the way down there we pass the Shanghai stadium, where there is some sort of NFL-sponsored event occurring, youth in practice gear tossing footballs and running scrimmages. The Longhua Temple fair is absurdly crowded--we actually don't get near the temple itself, but after being crushed in a logjam of people shopping for cheap merchandise between a row of booths, we give up and enter a nearby restaurant for lunch. Actually we walk into a humble basement establishment, and the restauranteur leads us next door to a fancier place. No foreigners allowed in the cheap places? Anyway, the meal is quite good; here it is: After hiking back uptown it's late afternoon. Having run out of tourist spots, we decide to spend the last evening looking for souvenirs, but don't have much luck. The Friendship Store is fairly tacky, and unnerving besides, with no customers and dozens of employees loafing around. Other shops don't have anything that looks appropriate for gift-giving (no one I know would want a gift box of dried squid, I don't think). The one thing that makes our walk back to the hotel at nightfall interesting is a street (I think Jinling Dong Lu) lined with shops carrying Chinese classical music instruments.

Mon 4/23--Back to the States.

2006-06-02T22:50:00.000-05:00

My Sassy Girl (2001)--Cute, fun, sweet Korean romcom, spoiled only by a jarring melodramatic interlude involving a hostage situation and by the syrup ladled on at the end. It's part of the formula, admittedly, to pair a wacky, free-spirited female against an initially exasperated but finally smitten male, but talent can always breathe life into the old forms--you could call the major scale cliched, but composers still create beautiful melodies with it. Actress Ji-hyun Jun is suitably attractive and mercurial. The way she challenges her boyfriend to perform publically embarassing tasks as proof of his love reminded me a bit of Yann Samuell's Love Me If You Dare, and then I find out Samuell is slated to direct the Hollywood remake of Sassy Girl. Oh, there's also some nice satire of other movie genres. B+

2006-05-01T22:31:00.000-05:00

Consumed in April

Movies
The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)--The quibbles I have with this fade further into insignificance each time I see it. The best of the trilogy.A

After the Thin Man (1936)--A typical installment in the series: William Powell cracks jokes in between cocktails, Myrna Loy arches her eyebrows, and the unlikeliest person turns out to be guilty of murder.B

b420 (2005)--Maybe I'm overrating this because it was the only in-flight movie that was worth watching, but this did seem to be like an entertaining version of Last Life in the Universe: subtropical Asian setting (Macau, not Thailand), relationship between free-spirited girl and Nice Boy, color-saturated cinematography, gang violence subplot. Miki Yeung is appealing as the tousled, gangly, google-eyed heroine.B

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)--Long biopic of the titular Broadway producer. The musical numbers are kitschy but impressive.B

Spaceballs (1987)--Corny, as Brooks himself admits on the commentary track, but fun nonetheless. I still love the double allusion to Alien and Looney Tunes.B

Temptress Moon (1996)--Member of a Shanghai crime syndicate is sent by his boss on a mission of theft to the mansion where he was taken in as an orphan; when he meets his childhood sweetheart grown into a beautiful woman, his loyalty is tested. It's understandable that Kaige Chen, after the worldwide success of Farewell My Concubine, would attempt to replicate that success by incorporating many of the same elements: historical setting, a love triangle involving Gong Li and Leslie Cheung, opium abuse, a homosexual subplot. But the formula doesn't work as well here, maybe because the characters were too selfish for me to sympathize with.C

The Producers (2005)--Boring, not very well acted by Broderick and Thurman (though Nathan Lane has some energy). C

Rumor Has It (2005)--D

2006-03-31T07:37:00.000-06:00

Consumed in March

Movies

Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)--Casual, intimate performance of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya filmed in the ruin of a defunct Manhattan theatre. It's instructive how the power of good acting and good writing can make one ignore the fact that these Russian nobility are wearing 1990's American clothing and drinking out of "I Love NY" coffee cups. The final monologue, in which homely Sophie urges herself and Vanya to console themselves for their loveless existence by clinging to the Christian hope of an afterlife, appealed to me for obvious reasons--but was also surprising given Chekhov's own agnosticism.A

His Girl Friday (1940)--Great entertainment, and probably would have been even funnier if I could have kept up with all of the rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue.A

Call of Cthulhu (2005)--The best film adaptation of a Lovecraft tale to date, done in chronologically appropriate style as a black and white silent film--as if Guy Maddin were an HPL fan. Doubly impressive given that it was produced by amateurs on a pittance.B+

Porco Rosso (1992)--Miyazaki's least imaginative film--sure, the title character is a WWI ace transformed into a pig, but otherwise there's nothing otherworldly about this animated riff on some themes of Casablanca. Of course it wouldn't be a Miyazaki film without a plucky young girl who rises to the challenge of leaving her sheltered existence. Pleasant but minor, on a par with Kiki's Delivery Service. B

Throne of Blood (1957)--As far as Kurosawa Shakespeare adaptations go, I liked Ran better. This one is fine but a bit slow (perhaps explained by the Noh influence mentioned by the web sites I consulted).B

Penny Serenade (1941)--Pretty sappy, and the child actress isn't very good, but affecting nonetheless.B-

L'Ennui (1998)--A stereotypical French art film, i.e. full of sex and verbiage. A middle-aged hyper-articulate philosophy professor has a torrid, doomed obsession with a plump and impassive teen. In many ways this is very well done, and it manages to avoid instantiating the titular quality, but the characters were repellent and incomprehensible to me. At the very least, in a few years I might look back on the film as an object lesson on how not to have a mid-life crisis.C+

Dead Man (1995)--Jarmusch's worst movie (though I haven't yet seen Broken Flowers), completely lacking the deadpan humor which make his other plotless movies watchable, and full of ersatz mysticism instead.D

Books

Michael Moorcock. The Elric Saga: Part I. Exciting stuff, though pulpier than I was expecting. It's sort of a wish-fulfillment fantasy for nerds: like most of them, the protagonist is thin, pale, brainy, and solitary; unlike them, he is a tough guy and womanizer, and wreaks vengence on the "jock," the popular and dashing usurper Yrkoon.

Benedicta Ward, ed. The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks. A little too legendary to be very helpful.

James Green, trans. The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu. I didn't experience satori, so I guess reading this was a waste of time.

Maxwell Johnson, Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary. When I tried praying the full-length version of the Breviary last year I was crushed under the weight of readings. This abridged version, edited by a professor of liturgy at my alma mater, might be more feasible.

Booze
Domaine de Fondrèche Côtes du Ventoux 2001
Piping Shrike Shiraz 2003
Hayman and Hill Pinot Noir 2004

Sheet Music
Francisco Tarrega, "Capricho Arabe"
Heitor Villa-Lobos, "Prelude no. 4"

2006-03-24T20:02:00.000-06:00

Haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd get one in before my end-of-the-month cultural consumption report.

A sign that I'm taking DVDs too seriously: I'm now a member of both Greencine and Netflix. I left NF for GC last year because I had gotten the impression that the latter had more foreign titles. It was the fact that they had Rivette's Jeanne la Pucelle while Netflix didn't which sealed the deal. But a chance conversation with a coworker who is a NF member and a Chinese movie fan revealed that NF has some Zhang Yimou in their catalog which GC doesn't. This led me to discover other lacunae. In fact, there were about thirty films I've been waiting for GC to lease which NF already offers, including occasional titles by big names like Chabrol, Rohmer, and Almodovar. (Frustratingly, GC will often sell some DVDs they won't lease.) GC's reputation as a source of foreign fare is overrated; their real specialization seems to be video-on-demand porn. However, as they do in fact have some interesting things NF doesn't (e.g. a lot more Satyajit Ray, or the Call of Cthulhu fanfilm (more on that at the end of the month)), I'm sticking with GC but downgrading to one-at-a-time membership level; I rejoined NF for two-at-a-time. The NF website is a lot more efficient as well, their delivery times are quicker, and I'm hoping that after getting busted in a lawsuit for "throttling" that they'll play fair from now on.

At work we discovered this week that we're missing catalog records for about 22,000 of our NetLibrary ebooks. We can't figure out how it happened, but considering that L.L., the previous cataloger, was not especially dedicated to her job, I have my suspicions.

For Lent I gave up Internet surfing. The goal is to check my mail, blogs, and online newspapers once a day, and to pick up a book or magazine when I need something to read. The fact that I've fallen off the wagon more than once is probably an indication that this is the abstention I needed to make.

This Sunday is the last service at the local OPC mission. Church shopping has been inconclusive.

2006-03-07T16:50:00.000-06:00

On-campus interview last weekend--more pleasant than most, but I won't find out anything until April 1.

Speaking of library jobs, check out this sobering article from the latest Educause Review predicting the death of the academic library within the decade.

2006-02-27T17:03:00.000-06:00

Consumed in February

Films

Stage Door (1937)--Travails of young women trying to break into the theatrical biz. Entertaining, although the incessant banter gets a bit tiring, and the ending assumes an unrealistically romanticized theory of the acting process. Regional stereotypes are off-putting. B+
Another Thin Man (1939)--Not as witty as the two previous installments, plus the combination of baby and anthropomorphized lap dog pushes the cute factor over the top.C
Farewell My Concubine (1993)--Didn't quite overwhelm me as it did when I first saw it in '93, probably because the exoticism of Beijing Opera has worn off with multiple viewings, but still powerful.A
The Worlds of Mei Lanfang (2000)--Short, low budget documentary about the actor who inspired the above movie. Moderately informative.B-
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)--Workable.B
Tony Takitani (2004)--Utterly worthless, but at least it's only 75 minutes long.F
Happy Times (2001)--Sweet, sentimental tale from the Zhang Yimou of Not One Less or The Road Home, not the somber art-house Yimou of Raise the Red Lantern or Ju Dou, nor the kung-fu sellout of Hero or House of Flying Daggers. A-
Adam's Rib (1949)--I wanted to like this, but the Hepburn who was an high-spirited, angular beauty in her twenties comes across as a mannish termagant in her 40s. The barely submerged gay subtext is odd too.C
Alice Adams (1935)--Hepburn aside, there's some noticeably leaden acting in this one, and it's hard to accept Fred Macmurray as a love interest, but the story is remarkably gritty for a Hollywood product of the thirties, actually reflecting the realities of the Depression rather than escaping them.B+
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)--Playful triptych of stories in which Loren and Mastroianni play incompatible lovers.A-
The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963)--Hard to believe, but this is a caper movie with Peter Sellers using a fake French accent which is actually entertaining and well-paced. B+
Stagecoach (1939)--Thomas Mitchell as an eloquent drunk steals the show. B+
Match Point (2005)--Yeah, it's basically Crimes and Misdemeanors without the funny bits, and yeah, there are heavy-handed moments, but it's still great to see Woody back in form. Genuinely tense in the last half-hour.A-

Books

Peter France, Hermits: The Insights of Solitude. I thought I would read up on the professional hermits to get some tips on living the lifestyle, but I don't think I can follow them in their hair-raising ascetical exercises.
Fletcher Pratt, The Well of the Unicorn. A little too much sword in this sword-and-sorcery yarn, but Pratt was a military historian after all. Still engaging and well-written for the genre.
Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist. Dunsanian charm.

Booze

Alta Vista Malbec 2002
Rock Rabbit Syrah 2002

2006-02-21T22:05:00.000-06:00

This year's international trip: Shanghai! American Airlines has an introductory fare offer going on. Unfortunately departing from Lubbock would add $600 to the ticket, so I have to leave from Dallas. Perhaps some kind soul in the DFW area will let me drive in the day before and stay overnight...I leave April 15 and return the 24th.

Fun With YouTube

Cooking with Kate Bush

Thom Yorke and Bjork on SpaceGhost

Brothers Quay montage (with incongruously upbeat tropical soundtrack)

Cap'n Beefheart on Letterman

2006-01-31T19:34:00.000-06:00

In the past few weeks of inactivity I've picked up a few RSS subscribers, which means it's about time to chase 'em off with a typically uninteresting post. Courtesy of the ever-hospitable Pablo, I got to spend a four-day weekend in Ft. Worth catching up on my Asian food consumption and used book shopping. I also played D&D for the first time in 20 years. In the interim the rules have become a little more sophisticated, as have the refreshments; in high school we gorged on pizza and Pepsi, but the treats this time included Belgian ale and dried peas coated in wasabi.

On the way back to the Panhandle I stopped by Booked Up, Larry McMurtry's massive antiquarian book shop occupying four buildings on the town square of his dusty little hometown. I didn't find much in my budget except for a Western Rite liturgy printed by the Antiochan Orthodox Church of America--basically a modified Anglican Prayer Book service. If you want an antique leather-bound tome with little reading value--say, an eighteenth-century French legal code--and are willing to pay through the nose for it, then Booked Up is the place for you. For me, it's not really worth the detour, although I was pleasantly surprised at how scenic the landscape around US-82 was, rather like a poor man's New Mexico. (And the first American edition of Venus in Furs was an interesting curio, though I wouldn't have paid the thirty bucks for it.)

Consumed in January

Films:Bringing Up Baby (1938); 2046 (2004); Love Me Tonight (1932); A Good Marriage (1982); Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989); Top Hat (1935); The Sorrow and the Pity (1969); Nô (1998)--

Underworld: Evolution (2005); Good Night and Good Luck (2005).Books: Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One; Evelyn Waugh, Scoop; The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila By Herself. Booze: Bodega Norton Cabernet Sauvignon 2003; Bodegas Castejon Vina Rey "70 Barricas" Tempranillo 2003; Blackstone Merlot; Oak Grove Cabernet Sauvignon 2003; Chateau Grand Caillou 2000.

2006-01-06T11:03:00.001-06:00

Addictive viewing for Nihonophiles. A relentlessly enthusiastic Japanese woman corners morning show celebrities and forces English lessons on them.

P.S.: I finally connected the dots and discovered that these hapless students of English are also the girls in the infamous Musume vs. Lizard clip showcased on American TV. This Musume clip, courtesy Google Video, is also pretty good.

2006-01-06T10:24:00.000-06:00

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article has shed some light on the shoddy treatment I received at my last on-campus interview. It seems I may have been a "faux finalist," brought in strictly pro forma even though the search committee had already set their heart on another candidate. Some of Sayer's experiences were uncannily similar to my own:

"The interview schedule can give some important clues that a search is not truly open. A position at a senior administrative rank should require an interview of at least two full days. Several of mine were shorter than one business day." Not that I was interviewing for a "senior administrative" position, but I was flown in and out in the same day, requiring an overnight layover in Las Vegas.

"Another time I was instructed to get a rental car to drive myself back and forth, not just from the airport to the hotel but also from the hotel to the campus, to spare the search committee members that "inconvenience." Yep--and they never did reimburse me for the rental car!

"During my final interview at that institution, only two people attended: the head of the search committee and one other member. Both were very gracious, but that didn't conceal the fact that so many others were missing." I didn't even get an interview with the search committee, just brief chats with a couple of administrators.

"If I had not already figured out that I was a faux finalist, my experiences at the dinner hour often settled it. Some frugal campuses have figured out that if no one from the search committee eats with the candidate, it's not part of the interview, and they can send the person off to forage for themselves with a $15 reimbursement limit." I got zilch.

It's unethical to bring someone in for an interview under such pretenses.

2005-12-11T11:39:00.000-06:00

Deeper Into Movies--Church Search--Reading List--Back in the Ring

I post with some trepidation, since I've noticed that whenever I slip into inactivity I start picking up subscribers (mostly people who sign up for any and all library blogs whatsoever), but when I make an effort to post more frequently I lose them. Extrapolating from this trend, if I never posted I would attain the popularity of an Instapundit, but probably the strategy has diminishing returns. So here's a post for form's sake.

In my DVD viewing I've been drawing from the deep well of vintage Hollywood. The movies of the '30s, their charm and glamour designed to distract a nation burdened by the Great Depression, also give me solace in my own mental trough. I don't have the emotional resources to spend on much Serious Art, and it's hard to be glum while watching Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. In the past two weeks, I've seen The Thin Man (thanks Society Dome), Shadow of the Thin Man, The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, Grand Hotel, and All About Eve. (Okay, not all of these are comedies or from the '30s, but even the dramas of the golden age are hard to take too seriously--melodrama mixed with wit.) Any other recommendations?

I decided to abandon a sinking ship and start church-hopping, even though our Calvie congregation doesn't get the axe until March. The past few weeks I've been going with K.G. to the Greek Orthodox church in Lubbock. K. G. is, as they say, a character; a brilliant West Texas farm kid who majored in religion and philosophy, doing not much homework but a lot of reading and debating. A hayseed Socrates, he walked around campus barefoot, chewing a stalk of grass in his rotting back-country teeth, talking with an incongruous combination of twanginess and eloquence to whomever would listen about, say, the transmission history of the Masoretic text or the differences between Attic, Homeric, and modern Greek. Now he's had to buckle down and support himself, but with no marketable skills he has become probably the nation's most erudite convenience store clerk. His independent studies led him to convert from the Baptist church to Orthodoxy, but without a vehicle he depends on others to take him to worship. Since I happen to be church shopping at the same time, it works out conveniently--he gets a ride and I get an excuse to check out the Greeks. Anyway, I'm enjoying the liturgy much more than the Reformed service--the chanting puts one in a contemplative frame of mind, and I certainly don't miss the long, dry Calvinist sermons devoted to microscopically detailed exegesis.

Latest reads: Pauline Kael, Deeper Into Movies--the Christgau of film criticism (or is it the other way around?), intelligent, sarcastic, liberal but rejects facile leftism; Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags--light satire of wartime bureaucracy.

After a few months of licking my wounds, I've started putting out resumes again. Unfortunately it seems that they're being ignored.

2005-11-28T19:43:00.000-06:00

Carlos Crawls Cowtown

Lamb vindaloo at Maharaja; Capote; Spinach pochette at La Madeleine; bottles of Bordeaux at Majestic Liquor; Merton and Sufi poetry at Half Price Books; free samples at Rahr Brewery; gawking at exotica like Pickled Makok, Grass Jelly juice, and Pork Uteri at the Vietnamese market; worship at a toney Episcopal church in the country club district; chicken-fried steak at Lucille's. And, of course, the hospitality of a very domestically-minded host. (Your coffee is still too weak, though!)

2005-11-20T19:04:00.000-06:00

Ill Communication

Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)--As someone who has gotten together with women and broken up with them, rejected them and been rejected by them, taken students to task and been taken to task by them, all in writing, I can appreciate July's point about the discomfort and difficulty of face-to-face communication in modern individualized society. She plays a struggling artist and chauffeur for the elderly who flubs important tete-a-tetes with a potential love interest and with the director of the local museum, but wins them over through more indirect means of expression. Meanwhile, a shoe salesman fails to seduce teenage girls with his pick-up lines, but later piques their interest with salacious fantasies written out and taped to his window; a seven-year old picks up a woman in an internet chat room; and a divorcée wears a T-shirt with self-affirming messages in backwards script, so she can feel good about herself while brushing her teeth.

I hope this doesn't sound too drearily sociological; the movie not only thoughtful but funny, the sort of combination of offbeat humor and melancholy that Lost in Translation and The Royal Tennenbaums reached for but missed. Think Ghost World. Something about the clothing, the decor, and the DayGlo color schemes exudes 80's retro, a throwback which had to happen eventually. Expect feathered hair and Swatches to reappear anytime now.

2005-11-12T15:18:00.000-06:00

Revenge of the Print Reference Materials!

Internet access is down in the library because I.T. is working on the servers. A student approached the ref desk and said "I can't get on the Internet and I need some information on carbon tetrachloride. Are there any reference books with that in it?" I took him to the CRC Handbook of Physics and Chemistry. His reaction after flipping through a few pages: "Wow, there's a lot of stuff in here!" He took the book with him to a study room.

On the other hand, I'm reading a book by a big-shot scholar who cites Wikipedia in his bibliography.

2005-11-11T20:37:00.000-06:00

Crawling into the twenty-first century, I broke down and got high-speed home internet access. This, combined with iTunes' new recommendation feature, ensures that I'll be handing over a lot of my money to Apple. (How could I have forgotten about "Destination Unknown" by Missing Persons, or "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground?) Still, there are some egregious lacunae in the iCatalog: no "Der Kommisar," "Safety Dance," or "Mexican Radio" as of yet.

2005-11-08T16:09:00.000-06:00

Miscellanea

A biology prof requested we purchase about $1000 worth of MCAT prep DVDs and CD-ROMs. I explained that we don't have the necessary equipment for those formats in the library. His response: "Oh, that's okay, I was just planning to check out the items and keep them in our department permanently." Grrr...[We went ahead and bought the items, by the way.]

I went to Sunday School expecting the latest installment in the pastor's ongoing series on the Lord's Supper when he dropped a bomb: the mother church is cutting off support in March. Just when I was getting settled in...So should I head to Rome or Wittenberg? I think Lutherans give better coffee hours.

Bouquins

John Mortimer, The First Rumpole Omnibus--Comic stories about a sarcastic London barrister,clearly inspired by Wooster and Jeeves--Rumpole combines Wooster's recurrent allusions to past episodes, his fondness for quoting English poets, and his subjugation under strong-willed female relatives, with Jeeves' quick wit. Not at the level of Wodehouse, but good stuff nonetheless.

Flicks

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)--Three men wander around a deserted power plant for 160 minutes. Art-film paradise! A-

Lubbock Lights (Amy Maner, 2005)--Bills itself as a documentary about the history of popular music in Lubbock, but mostly focuses on the Flatlanders, a proto-alt-country band which recorded an underground classic in the late '60s and promptly fragmented into fairly successful solo acts. Interviews, snippets of concert footage. Low-budget but competent. B

Millions (Danny Boyle, 2004)--First half is fresh and funny, but then slowly succumbs to triteness, reaching its nadir at the painfully sappy interview between the child and his dead mother. Good to see a positive use of Christian elements, even if only as a fairy tale.B-

Björk at the Royal Opera House (2002)--Looks good, sounds good. Most of the songs are from Vespertine, her best album. She isn't one for on-stage banter, but the DVD extras have plenty of interviews with her and the supporting musicians. A-

2005-11-03T21:30:00.000-06:00

Bouquins

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle: A bit too pomo for my tastes (incessant multilingual word play, metafictional asides, polyvalent sexuality), but remains an interesting tale well told of a aristocratic Russian-American couple whose affair is complicated by reason of consanguinity. Again, as in Lolita, the girl is pre-pubescent, which makes me wonder about Nabokov's own proclivities, but at least the lover is only a few years older this time. Clever nihilism.

Tunes

Listen to a stream of Kate Bush's Aerial at NME.

2005-11-01T16:44:00.000-06:00

Nothing interesting to report--I've seen a buncha DVDs, read a few books, downloaded a lot of mildly cheesy 80s pop on iTunes--but I felt the need to update, so here are some metaphysico-geographical musings from David Byrne:

The first and only time I visited Lubbock, I was touring with Talking Heads, and we played there--this must have been about 1979. I liked the flatness, where you'd see a flat landscape with one building stuck up on it. Often you'd see the one building stuck in the middle of that landscape with no trees around it whatsoever. I thought that was kind of great, too. That always seemed existential or something; it seemed like a physical manifestation of man's situation in the universe. A tiny little figure perpendicular to the plane of the earth, basically helpless and shelterless, like a cartoon version of some kind of cosmic situation. It's like what a kid would do: they would first draw a straight line and then stick a person on it, or a house.--from Lubbock Lights (2005)

2005-10-24T16:36:00.000-05:00

Recent Viewings: Movie Math edition

Zero Focus=Rashomon + (Twin Peaks - Mulholland Drive)= B
Reign of Fire=Road Warrior + Dragonslayer = B+
Au Hasard Balthasar=The Red Balloon + Diary of a Country Priest = C+
The Red Shoes=Singin' in the Rain + The Company = B
Fanny and Alexander (Television Version)=Brideshead Revisited + Babette's Feast + Sixth Sense = B+

2005-10-19T21:14:00.000-05:00

Well, Pablo, the Amarillo liquor stores, though cheaper than those in Lubbock, seem to have a more limited selection--I couldn't find any bottles of the heralded 2000 vintage Bordeaux. Maybe when I visit Ft. Worth next month I'll be able to stock up on the good stuff. I did get talked into buying a certain Alta Vista Grande Reserve Malbec 2002--never heard of it, but I'm at the mercy of wine geek recommendations until I get more experience.

2005-10-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

Tunes

The Guardian gets a sneak preview of the new Kate Bush album, and likes it. The (London) Times is not as impressed.

2005-10-14T15:37:00.000-05:00

DVD

Lubbock Lights, a documentary on the South Plains music scene, is finally out on DVD. I'm getting it for our library--local interest, ya know. (But what is David Byrne doing in there? Is West Texas as exotic to him as Brazil?)

2005-10-12T18:22:00.000-05:00

Just Another Day in Colldev...

I've been reading Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle, picked up at a used book store, and decided to check our library's Nabokov holdings. No Ada or even Lolita! I continue to be surprised by the gaps in our collection. So I immediately put in an order for the Library of America Nabokov volumes. Since I had nothing better to do, I did a spot check of some other authors that came to mind, and uncovered the following omissions:

C. S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy (amazing that we wouldn't have this central work of an author so popular here)
V. S. Naipaul, Bend in the River
Shusaku Endo, Silence (you would think a school with courses in missiology would have already had this famous historical fiction about the Jesuit martyrs of Japan)
Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest

Name That Author!

beatified angels, term wherefrom, understand separate substances, natural immutation, angel cannot change, corporeal creatures were, notional acts, term whereto, essence begets, exclusive diction, common spiration, bodies naturally united, merited beatitude, power than the intellect, twofold opinion, divisible place, invisible mission, memorative powers, woman should have been made, angels grieve, necessity upon things, darksome atmosphere, knowledge from things, understand immaterial substances, causal virtues

2005-10-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

The Boss and I spent most of the day trying to make sense of the rather cryptically organized file cabinet left by D.B. at her retirement. To be fair, she was always able to produce a document on demand, so the system obviously made sense to her--but we'd rather present her successor with a more common-sensical arrangement.

2005-10-11T11:53:00.000-05:00

After being the wine-bearer at a number of Calvinist dinner parties over the past month, I found myself last night looking at a nearly empty wine rack. There was only one bottle left: the 1997 Chateau La Cordonne Medoc I purchased months ago, my first foray into $20+ per bottle wine. I had been saving it for a special occasion but decided, like Miles in Sideways, that I probably won't be having any special occasions anytime soon. Besides, in a dry county you can't just nip down to the corner grocery store to pick up some table wine. So I poured a glass of the Medoc with some pasta and gingerly took a sip, bracing myself for gustatory ecstasy.

While it certainly tasted different than the mass-produced stuff I'm used to, I can't say I enjoyed it more. It was surprisingly watery and muted, though perhaps real connoisseurs would chalk that up to a palate corrupted by gin and cheap merlots. Can any wine snobs out there tell me anything about this vineyard? Anyway, it's probably just as well that someone on a librarian's salary not get enamored of pricey booze.

2005-10-10T14:34:00.000-05:00

I finished teaching my half of the Lewis course. It didn't go as well as I would have liked, but nevertheless the experience was worthwhile in a number of respects. First, I get paid $900, and I'm already shopping for a high-definition TV. Second, it was nice having an excuse to read Lewis again, and I picked up on some themes that I overlooked in previous readings. (E.g. I just now noticed how prominent the theme of integrating the rational with the emotional and imaginative is in his writings.) Third, my best student, a genuine Lewis enthusiast and Roman Catholic who would be classified politely as "non-traditional," would like to introduce me to her daughter, a law student at Notre Dame who is (in her admittedly biased opinion) "the brilliant one of the family."

Touchstone article: The conservative Kerouac. (Dharma Bums is one of my favorite novels, pure escapism that manages not to be cloying.)

2005-10-05T13:26:00.000-05:00

I always wondered how Chinese restaurant workers with little to no English ended up in out-of-the-way places like Plainview, TX: Waiters, Cooks to Go. Leave it to a NYT reporter to call small towns "nameless," though.

2005-10-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

Saw the Scorcese doc. on Bob Dylan last night. Fascinating stuff for us Dylanomanes, and will probably be of interest for fans of the folk revival as well, but I doubt it has any broader appeal. Contemporary interviews with Dylan, Baez, Von Ronk, Kooper, etc., are interspersed with plenty of concert footage and photos. The juxtaposition is startling proof of Sic transit gloria mundi; these 60s hipsters are transformed before our eyes into overweight potential members of AARP with creased faces and bad fashion sense. The theme of the narrative is Dylan's transition from folkie to rock star, but surprisingly "My Back Pages," a protest song against protest songs, isn't discussed, nor is the album from which it is taken, Another Side of Bob Dylan (the title of which hints at Dylan's increasing desire to been seen as more than a left-wing prophet). I dunno, perhaps Scorcese just wanted to make the contrast more stark for dramatic purposes. A- for fans. Useless trivia: my coworker J.E. was a fellow student of Dylan's at a fundamentalist Bible school in the 70s. J. didn't actually meet His Bobness, but did see him frequently.

2005-09-30T10:56:00.000-05:00

My Library Thing catalog, very much in progress.

I'll be doing acquisitions as well as collection development until December. We hired a local school librarian to replace D.B., but the former has to finish up the semester in her current position. I've already been busy, placing orders for replacement copies of a bunch of Luther books lost in the mail en route to one of our satellite-campus students. (The postal system here is pretty bad--another compelling reason for us to start acquiring more e-books.)

Name That Author:
old ancestor, aged relative, old blood relation
greasy bird, funny fish, dying duck, stealing pigs, gathering frogs, stone the crows, silver cow, miserable worm
five quid, ten quid, fifty quid, thousand quid

2005-09-29T17:06:00.000-05:00

I propose a new game for book geeks: Name That Author, based on the "statistically improbable phrases" taken from the amazon.com record of one of his or her books. Here we go:

curvilinear hieroglyphs, tarry stickiness, twilight abysses, sealed loft, sealed trapdoors, spiky image, twilit grotto, hill noises, fishy odour, domed hills, accursed house, slanting floor, slanting wall, elder world, blasted heath, captive minds, secondary personality, grocery boy (???).

Anyone?

2005-09-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

Catalog your home library with Library Thing.

Turning the Pages at the British Library.

2005-09-20T16:16:00.000-05:00

How to respond when an attractive woman approaches and asks, "Can I show you any fetishes?" Yes, I was looking at a display case of kachina dolls in a Santa Fe gift shop, but it still took me a second to recover my composure. The trip west was enjoyable, though even after four days in a row of New Mexican cuisine my father never got the perfect enchilada he was hoping for. I read in the Santa Fe paper that the fast-growing south side of town is breaking ground on a new library--something to keep track of during my job search.

As I mentioned a while back, D.B., our aged and increasingly forgetful acquisitions clerk--a technical services Miss Trixie--is retiring next week. The open position has proved to be quite popular. Two student workers and L.L., the former cataloguer who left to start a doomed jewelry business, have expressed interest. In a public forum I feel constrained not to give my opinion regarding their chances.

I gave up on the breviary. It takes up too much time for anyone not in the cloister (or unemployed). I found myself racing through the Psalms auctioneer-style. However, I'll probably use some of the readings to supplement the Daily Office.

2005-09-13T08:36:00.000-05:00

Wodehouse, Kierkegaard, humor, and Christianity.

My parents are flying in tomorrow, then we head for New Mexico. No blogging til next Wednesday.

2005-09-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

We finally heard from our extended family. They all fled Biloxi successfully, ending up in Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. I grew up hearing stories from them about Hurricane Camille; Katrina will undoubtedly overshadow it in the collective memory. Home of Barq's root beer and eccentric potter George Ohr, Cajun Catholics and Vietnamese Buddhists, filé gumbo and oyster po-boys, Southern drawls and the odd Brooklynesque coastal accent--I'd hate to see the town wiped off the map.

The Lewis class is going okay. The students were quite talkative the first day, when we discussed Surprised by Joy, but they seemed to be struggling on Thursday with Lewis' argument against naturalism in Miracles. One problem I have in preparing for the class is that most of the secondary literature of Lewis is written by unabashed Lewis fans and so is insufficiently critical. Sad to say, a lot of the most thoughtful Lewis commentary is on websites like Secular Web.

I borrowed the Anglican Breviary thru ILL and am giving it a trial run before springing for my own copy. Obviously my work schedule precludes me spreading out the hours throughout the day, so I clump them together thus:

Before work: Lauds, Prime
Lunch: Terce, Sext, None
Evening: Vespers
Night: Compline, Matins

If it weren't already taken, I should have named my blog "Library Monk."

Latest Viewing:

Ray Muller, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993)--Three hours of interviews and footage. Riefenstahl gets occasionally testy, whether in responding to questions about her association with the Nazis or in telling director Muller how to do his job. Generally, though, she is cooperative, informative, and enthusiastic, especially in giving technical commentary on the production of her movies. B+
Yann Samuell, Love Me If You Dare (2003)--This weird French romantic drama was obviously made post-Amelie--heck, there's even an antique tin box at the center of the plot. But whereas Amelie was whimsical and charming, Samuell's film manages to be both hokey and disturbing. C
Satyajit Ray, The Big City (1963)--Wife of an underemployed banker takes a job as a saleswoman, much to the consternation of her conservative in-laws. Recommended for Indophiles. B
Oliver Hirschbiegel, Downfall (2004)--Last days in Hitler's bunker, based on the memoirs of his secretary. Avoid if you can't tolerate to see Nazis portrayed as human beings. B+

2005-08-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

Lament for the Rock Snob.

2005-08-14T18:47:00.000-05:00

Went to the Lawyer's house for lunch after church. A couple of interesting items:

--The Lawyer figures prominently in a forthcoming book on the infamous local drug bust case he was involved in. The author sent him an advance copy along with some promotional literature, which latter states that the movie rights have been acquired, Halle Berry slated to star. I think it'd be exciting if they actually decided to film in the area--although that isn't guaranteed since "Happy, Texas," which also takes place in the Panhandle, was shot in southern California. I suggested to the Lawyer that his role should be played by Liam Neeson; he jokingly responded "No, Danny DeVito." A coworker said that when "Leap of Faith" was filmed here Steve Martin was very approachable and personable, Debra Winger very much not so.

--The mother church in Amarillo that lends financial support to our congregation is going to "seriously reconsider" the arrangement come December. Looks kind of bleak, since we're losing rather than gaining members. I'm not sure what I'll do if this church goes bust. If I want traditional Christianity I'll have to turn towards either Rome or Wittenberg (via St. Louis).

Currently reading: David C. Downing, Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis' Journey to Faith.

Latest Viewing: Agnes Jaoui, Look at Me. B+

2005-08-13T15:22:00.000-05:00

Tentative Outline of my half of the Lewis course

1—Introduction; historical and autobiographical background
2—Lewis Becomes a Theist: from Surprised by Joy, “The First Years,” “The Great Knock,” “The New Look,” and “Checkmate”. (Might discuss relevant passages from Pilgrim’s Regress)
3—Lewis Becomes a Theist: from Miracles, “The Self-Contradiction of the Naturalist” and “A Further Difficulty in Naturalism” (photocopy)
4—Lewis Becomes a Christian: Letters to Arthur Greeves; “What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?”
5—Lewis the Theologian: “Miracles,” “Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger,” maybe selections from Miracles?
6—Lewis the Theologian: “Efficacy of Prayer,” “Letters to Malcolm”
7—Lewis the Theologian: “The World’s Last Night”
8—Lewis the Theologian: “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” “Reflections on the Psalms”
9—Lewis the Preacher: “Weight of Glory,”
10—Lewis the Preacher: “Learning in Wartime”
11—Lewis the Social Critic: “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (photocopy)
12—Lewis the Social Critic: from Mere Christianity, “Social Morality;” Abolition of Man 1, “Men Without Chests.”
13—Lewis the Social Critic: Abolition of Man 2, “The Way.”
14—Lewis the Social Critic: Abolition of Man 3, “The Abolition of Man,” appendix.

2005-08-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

I agreed to teach half of the Lewis course, focusing on philosophy and theology, and someone from the English dept. will cover his lit crit and fiction. I'll pick up $900 and the prep will keep me busy during these painfully slow days in the library before the beginning of the new semester. Currently reading: Joseph Peace, C. S. Lewis and the Roman Catholic Church

iTunes download: Murray Head, "One Night in Bangkok" (I'll plead nostalgia on this one).

2005-08-11T08:51:00.000-05:00

Because a recently-hired English professor was unexpectedly let go due to various indiscretions, a last-minute opportunity has arisen for me to teach all or part of an honors class on C. S. Lewis. I'm trying to decide if I should accept. On the one hand, Lewis is one of my literary heroes, and teaching would be a nice break from the library routine. On the other hand, I haven't taught in almost six years, I wouldn't have much time for prep, and the class would cut deeply into my free time. What to do?

Latest iTunes downloads: Saint Etienne, "Calico"; ? and the Mysterians, "96 Tears"

2005-08-10T03:25:00.000-05:00

Today is the feast day of St. Lawrence, Martyr, patron saint of librarians.

Almighty God, who didst call thy deacon Laurence to serve thee with deeds of love, and didst give him the crown of martyrdom: Grant we beseech thee, that we, following his example, may fulfill they commandments by defending and supporting the poor, and by loving thee with all our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

2005-08-09T09:36:00.000-05:00

Exciting news: Ripping Yarns is finally being released on Region 1 DVD. Guess I can put off buying that region-free DVD player for the time being. I've been waiting for this day for years, ever since I found an edition of the scripts at a library used book sale.

Latest Viewing: Olivier Assayas, Late August, Early September C, Tim Burton, Edward Scissorhands B+

2005-08-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

The bootlegging mission to Amarillo on Saturday was successful. I went to a Wal-Mart Supercenter, where the prices were about 20% less than the liquor stores in Lubbock. Didn't get anything too fancy, though: Ravenswood Zinfandel, Yellow Tail Shiraz (1.5 ml), Bella Sera Merlot (1.5 ml), Blue Moon, Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, New Belgium. That should last a couple of months. Then tried the sushi bar, which was ok but I've decided that sushi is too expensive for a main course--$15 for 6 pieces of nigri sushi! The cold Asahi hit the spot on that hot Texas afternoon, though. Then went to B&N to kill a few hours drinking Sumatra and skimming through Eusebius. A beautiful young married woman seating next to me was reading a self-help book on finding love, which struck me as odd. I was interested to see that, according to Eusebius, the church at Rome rejected the Letter to the Hebrews, ironic considering that many modern-day RC apologists argue that only their church's approval can give us any confidence in the table of contents of the NT Canon. Then went to the cinema to see Howl's Moving Castle. It's not one of Miyazaki's better efforts, unfortunately, but there's enough beauty and imagination in it to make it worth watching nonetheless. B-.

iTunes downloads: Lindsey Buckingham, "Trouble" (yeah, it's Lite Rock, but that nylon-string picking is quite nice); Bob Dylan, "Simple Twist of Fate" (live version) and "Tangled up in Blue" (NY version, better than the album version).

2005-08-05T22:40:00.000-05:00

Friday Scrabble in the library is becoming a tradition. (Actually we played Literati on Yahoo, but same difference.) I came in second to last place this time. Maybe I need to read a few sections of the OED this weekend.

The latest Miyazaki finally made it to west Texas--not in Lubbock, but in more distant Amarillo. But since the liquor is cheaper up there, the trip will be worth it. Plus I can try the new sushi place I've heard about.

Latest viewing: Immortal: Ad Vitam--drawing comparisons with an earlier anglophone French sci-fi flick, The Fifth Element, would be too easy, the borrowings are so numerous. Suffice it to say that while this one has better visuals, its story is not nearly so entertaining. Cold and amoral.

Today's iTunes download: Steely Dan, "FM"

2005-08-03T21:24:00.000-05:00

I added a list of albums I own, with ratings. Not that I think it's a particularly impressive collection--a grad school roommate once amassed this many in a single semester by joining BMG under all his friends' names--but perhaps I'll find readers who have similar tastes.

2005-07-30T19:37:00.000-05:00

Productive day's shopping at the Lubbock CD shops: Exile on Main Street, Physical Graffiti, Do the Bossa Nova with Herbie Mann (is there any wimpier music than bossa nova played on the flute?), Nighthawks at the Diner, Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Also tried the new Asian buffet, which had some dishes not offered at the usual places (including that dish with deep-fried tofu and shitake mushrooms that I tried and failed to cook one time).

Latest viewing: Portraits Chinois. B+

2005-07-29T20:46:00.000-05:00

Had a colonoscopy yesterday. I think the less said about it the better, except that the results were entirely negative and it seems I simply have irritable bowel syndrome, the common cold of gastroenterology.

After a lot of googling and downloading of freeware both famous and obscure, I've finally cobbled together a sort of Rube Goldberg chain of programs enabling me to convert RealAudio files into MP3s, which I'll upload into the iPod. Now I can listen to, say, Fr. Benedict Groeschel discuss St. John of the Cross on mortification, while undergoing my own ascetic practices at the gym.

Latest viewing: Yasujiro Ozu, Good Morning B+

2005-07-24T21:22:00.000-05:00

Theology

Substitute preacher today--the chaplain (if that's the correct term) at the Reformed campus ministry in Lubbock. Sermonizing on the Noah's ark story, he made the predictably Calvinist point that God's covenant with Noah and his family was an act of grace not based on Noah's worthiness--which blatantly contradicted the reading of the text delivered just a few minutes earlier: "Then the Lord said to Noah, 'Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.'" Goes to show you that even the most proudly sola scriptura churches read texts through the lenses of their own traditions.

The Calvinist doctrine of election is too extreme. Even the covenant with Abraham (which the Reformed, based on Paul's letter to the Romans, take as the prototype of salvation by faith alone) seems dependent on Abraham's obedience: "Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you," etc. I don't know Hebrew of course, but the English word "because" in the RSV translation stresses the conditionality of the promise.

Psychology

Started reading The Introvert Advantage. In the introductory chapters the author is mostly concerned to define the trait and to argue that cultural factors cause it to be perceived as a flaw rather than a simple genetic variation with its own strengths and weaknesses. I was interested, not surprisingly, in a little text box on introversion and the movies. I've seen most of the ones listed, but not Chocolat or Gosford Park. Although heretofore I've been avoiding these, the first because it looked fluffy and the second because it looked stuffy, I may now want to give them a try. The best cinematic portray of introversion, though, wasn't listed: Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert. The scene in which Marie Rivière's introverted Delphine gets upstaged at lunch by a boisterous blond was painfully realistic.

2005-07-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday IT called and ordered us to log off all computers in the library due to a network slowdown caused, perhaps, by a virus. Thus disconnected, did we library workers spend our time usefully reading the latest editions of Library Journal and C&RL? No, we played Scrabble. Unfortunately we only had access to the Spanish language version, housed in the Juvenile section for education majors, so the letter distribution was unusual by English standards and included double-l and -r tiles. I got my ass kicked--no surprise there, eh Pablo?

Today I got an iPod! I plan to use it at the gym to distract me from the pain. I'll probably download a few tunes from my CD collection, some news broadcasts from Radio France Internationale, and some religious programming from EWTN. With 30 GB of space, I won't have to be very discriminating.

2005-07-22T13:26:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I found out who got the job I interviewed for. This person received a degree from a fundie/dispie seminary before getting the MLS, so I can understand him or her being a better fit than myself. This situation illustrates a problem that has dogged my entire professional career: I'm too religious and conservative for the secular and post-Christian schools, and too liberal for the evangelical and fundamentalist schools. The only faithful but moderate Christian schools around are either Roman Catholic or Texas Baptist, as far as I can tell.