The surfing, she is good

The surfing, she is good these days…

The time management, she is not.

Alas.

Just when I thought Neil Gaiman couldn’t get any cooler, he went and started writing a blog about American Gods.

Hugely gratifying: Literary critics ‘fess up at Slate about great books they haven’t read. This compilation of Amazon reader comments on the Modern Library’s top 20 novels of the 20th century was reasonably entertaining as well, though given that I’ve only read 4.5 of the 20 (The Great Gatsby, Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, half of To The Lighthouse), I suppose I’m not in a position to judge the accuracy (of lack thereof) of their commentary.

Slate performs an important public service with The Complete Bushisms. Some of my favourites:

“Keep good relations with the Grecians.”

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”

“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.”— Speaking during “Perseverance Month”

“We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there’s not this kind of federal—federal cufflink.”

“Laura and I really don’t realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis.”

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

“The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I’ve looked at. I do not believe we’ve put a guilty … I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas.”

Oh God, I’m just halfway up the page!

Blogging From The Hip

When Jared at Entropy ponders the inescapable reach of the Increasingly Visible Hand of Corporations Incorporated, and Rabi at Wockerjabby is trying (eloquently) to put her finger on the line between her campus persona and who she is in her writing, which is something I’ve been wondering about ever since Russ told me he saw a different person in my site from who I seem to be in normal life, and Ken is as funny and strange (and uncapitalized…grrr, Ken, grrr…) as usual and calls me the “the critical, rational and cost-mindful goddess of all that is musical and cd-ish”, and the computer room is closing in minutes and the resident computer room Nazi is stalking around impatiently, and I’ve really got to get back to sex discrimination law because I haven’t attended a single lesson this entire week and it’s THURSDAY now, and this sentence is really rather long; when all these things are afoot (and that’s not quite the right word, but I don’t have time to think of the right one), I think it’s better to highlight good stuff other people are writing today than try to come up with some crap of my own.

Whoo, gotta run. Nazi man having kittens.

Business Idea

If I could figure out what it is about exploding dog that tugs so wonderfully at your heartstrings and bottle it, I bet I could make enough money to buy up all the Hallmark products in the world and burn them.

Miserably Failing To Fight The Power

Hallelujah, it lives.

Things I did yesterday when Blogger wasn’t showing me love:

  • Finally got round to completely reading the famous Things my girlfriend and I have argued about page. Wish I’d gotten to it sooner, because it’s absolutely hilarious!
  • Looked for Sonic Youth T-shirts on eBay and got pissed off because they’re all big enough for the entire band to wear at the same time.
  • Looked for Sonic Youth posters on eBay and got pissed off because I either can’t afford to buy the good ones, or they’re not shipped internationally.
  • Contemplated the existential dilemma of postmodern man. Not.
  • Got very strange looks from other people in the computer room while looking at Lego porn.
  • Caught up with Red Meat and Get Fuzzy.
  • Read The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock for the umpteenth time. I never tire of it.
  • Completely wasted my entire day in unproductive activity and left the blasted cluster room hours later seething with frustration and disgust.

Oh, Blogger. The power. The power…

Student Discount Day Yay

I love Student Discount Day at Borders. Today’s haul:
The Sandman Companion (Hy Bender), £8.99
Grandaddy: Under The Western Freeway, £6.99
Roots Manuva: Brand New Second Hand, £6.99
Stereo MCs: DJ Kicks, £6.99
The Beta Band’s self titled, £6.99
20% off everything. :)

Speaking of Sandman, I just found this new and pretty damn excellent gallery! I also found out that Neil Gaiman has a new book coming out in July, American Gods. It’s already on my wishlist.

Discovering little things like these make me happy, and are good for the stress headache I seem to be suffering from right now. Another site for sore heads is this one in honour of artist Dave McKean. which I’ve been devouring over quite a while. Its parent site, erasing.org is also highly worth a visit – it’s one of the very small number of sites I check every day.

Hmm. What else before I return to my room and my property law essay?

I’m a wallpaper junkie. Even more so when it’s eels wallpaper (the band. Not the long slimy sea thing.)

This Peanuts version of the breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins is funny and all, but after reading it, I sort of just sat here and felt…sad. Say what you will about the theatrics, the tantrums and the teen angst lyrics, but at the end of it all, I loved the music, lusted after James Iha, liked Billy in spite of all the bad press he got, and thoroughly enjoyed the two occasions I saw the band in concert (Singapore 1995ish, London 2000). Current favourite SP song, (though it might well be a different one in a few days time): Soothe. I love the guitar work on it.

Damn it, someone already made a Kilgore Trout page. I often find it difficult to commit myself to absolute rankings i.e. My All-Time Favourite ______, but I think I can say, without a doubt, that Kilgore Trout would probably be my all-time favourite writer who doesn’t exist.

Fearful Symmetry

CD-Wow has The Roots Come Alive and Ladysmith Black Mambazo: The Warner Brothers Collection for £6.99 each and free delivery. Hmmm. Should I snap these up because they’re cheap, or hold out for better albums by the artists like Things Fall Apart for The Roots and something from Ladysmith’s Nascente label days instead? I can hear a little voice in my head and it whispers prudence.

I wanted to listen to Maxinquaye last night, but remembered that it’s been on loan to Gareth since the beginning of this academic year. Note to self: nag. I also really wanted to listen to Loveless but I forgot to bring it back with me when I returned here after summer at home in Singapore. Note to self: MUPPET.

I really want to write something about this post at Entropy, but I don’t have the time right now. So often, when I’m reading this blog, it feels as if its author Jared has reached into my head, found the most fundamental things by which I define and understand myself, and written them down far more compellingly than I am able to. The scary thing is that he’s writing it about himself, and doesn’t know I exist.

The inevitable cliches about how the Internet brings the people of the world together and how you suddenly discover some wondrous synergy between yourself and someone you have never met thousands of miles away come to mind. But I’ve been on the Net since 1994, have spent more hours surfing the Web than I dare to compute, and have never seen any site with content that speaks to me quite like his. Something even scarier is that much of his “about me” page would sum me up perfectly.

It’s somewhat weird. A little depressing, in a way. Hmmm.

Off The Ground And Stumbling

Joy. The problems I’ve been having with updating my site have been solved by Russ, my usual first port of call for technical assistance. Thankfully, this time when I asked him to figure out what was wrong, there was actually something wrong. Usually, the problems magically cease to exist at the very instant I’m trying to demonstrate them, having gone on and on in my usual lengthy way about the inconvenience and annoyance they’ve caused me. This, of course, is a source of great amusement to him, as are all my other little quirks and foibles…

The point is, anyway, that I’m starting to get my act together with this page. Now I just have to get my act together with my life. European Community law, here I come.

Inaugural Gooseflesh

I feel as if some meaningful commentary must be made on this first entry; this big toe gingerly dipped into the bloggy waters of Web “independent content”, or whatever damn buzzword they’ve dreamt up for it now.

Perhaps I should describe some sudden epiphany that prompts this decision to clamber onto an already teetering bandwagon. But nothing comes to mind. Nothing profound, anyway.

Right now I’m distracted by the mundane. I need to buy groceries, have dinner and get to my debating committee meeting by 6 pm. I need to wrestle with my conscience about whether to stay for the debate, which should be fun (This House Would Invade France) or go get some work done, which I should have done today but didn’t. And on a more fundamental and long term level, I need to think of some way to channel my disgust at my own laziness into something productive, instead of letting it melt away as it usually tends to do.

I think the message of the day, and of this first entry, is that the last thing I need is yet another inspired way of wasting time. But am I going to keep on doing this blogging thang? Hell yeah!