Over in the pig-pile of overcaffinated thinking at Metafilter there's currently a long and perhaps surfworthy discussion of the five-finger discount happening. That's all well and good, but we're hurt that no one there has mentioned what we think is perhaps the only memoir on the subject done in Power Point, which debuted here many months ago.
As we sit here looking at a packet of post-its that we can't remember purchasing -- and thus were almost certainly, at some point, rescued from where they languished, purposeless, in the depths of an office-supply cabinet -- we are certainly in no position to judge or weigh in on the issue. But we like reading the arguments anyway.
It looks oddly like Winter out there today, an untypically (for this year) Typical later-February day, the sky a nameless brand of white, with an undecided mix of snow and rain dropping at uneven rates. It's a damned welcome thing too, as the drought here has gotten bad enough that the city is talking about getting drinking water from under JFK airport or thereabouts.
It was strange enough to visit southern California's artificially maintained coastal desert: all those palm trees sprouting up in the world's largest man-made oasis. But it was stranger to come back to an NYC that looked like SoCal in winter -- clear skies, every day temperate, leather-jacket weather, and not a mud puddle in sight. As a city of pedestrian, dry-and-mild should always be our climate of preference, but it's become alienating. And worrisome: one can't help envisioning the dust-bowl effect on Prospect Park after a few more months of this. Not to mention what the F train morning rush is going to smell like if shower rationing becomes necessary.
The lousy economy and so many of our friends jobless; the spectacle of the Bush administration using its popularity to fight all the wrong battles (hey, taxpayers! It's your Superfund cleanup now!); the lingering horror of tomorrow's bomb; and now this endless dessication and the prospect of a brown Spring. Something has to give: we'll settle for some rain and snow. Buckets. Cats and Dogs. Forty days, forty nights, whatever it takes.
We offer very little today except for this, overheard earlier in a creaky elevator making its descent in a building full of doctor's offices.
Elderly Woman in Wheelchair: Well, what are you going to do now?
Similarly Elderly Male Companion: I think I'm going to go to bed!
EWIW: [laugh]
SEMC: Oh, the Olympics are over!
EWIW (with distress): Oh, I know!
SEMC (quickly): But Frasier's back!
EWIW (delighted): That's right, that's right!
No more geography this week. As always, please make your guess without reference to anything other than your own memory.
On December 6, 1884, the tip of the Washington Monument was capped with a small pyramid roughly one foot in height. Of what then-uncommon substance was this pyramid made?
Post your answer to comments. Winner this week to receive a charming souvenir of the big Japanese mall at 3rd and Alameda in downtown Los Angeles.
Laura, Queen of Equatorial, takes last week's trivia prize. The answer is Catalan.
Before we fly away to the Left Coast for Spring Training Camp, our weekly quiz. This really should be White-House themed, but we don't have anything interesting on the subject. So it's back to flogging the tired old nag of Geography. Next week, we shove off of this, I promise.
Remember, no going to the bookshelf before you answer. Your question:
What is the official language of Andorra?
First correct answer to comments gets a far-out souvenir of Los Angeles. We'll be back late next week; American readers are urged to celebrate "Presidents Day" by consuming various cut-rate goods and meditating on the quality of greatness in the Executive Branch.
To be honest, this week is a lost cause. Interviews. Writing group: still getting off the ground but sputtering into life. Revisions of an article. Looming travel. Cat that needs to be taken elsewhere during aforementioned travel. Valentine's Day -- yes, Valentine's Day (we're just cooking dinner, but we actually have to think about this one in advance; we can't call her at six and say "pasta OK?")
We know that the comments aren't working right for Netscape, and that the CSS seems not to be able to format them any more at all. Something to do with our abortive attempt to redirect the publishing of the blog out of this bloody "test" folder (yes, we're in permissions hell here -- "CHMOD, take me away!")
Does anybody besides me remember those Calgon ads? And are bubble baths really that therapeutic?
On to important news: Mike "Karma" Kasenter wins the Geography Quiz with his half-correct but honestly attempted answer. (We were, of course, looking for Tennessee and Missouri). The rest of you are to be commended in your honorable fessing-up, but it doesn't win you any Naughty Postcards.
There will be a weekly Quiz of this kind posted every Friday morning, weather permitting.
No peeking at the atlas, now kids (unless you're one of our International Readers, in which case you are permitted a 10-second overlook of a map of the continental U.S. before play begins: go do it now, before you read the question). If you can't figure it out and must look at a map, please recuse yourself from the competition and let others play.
First correct answer posted to Comments wins a Naughty Postcard signed by the entire Wombat File editorial staff.
Ready?
Without consulting a map, name the only two U.S. states which are adjacent to eight other U.S. states. (Hint: they are adjacent to one another).
And no, this isn't a trick question. Straight-up trivia. If you buzz in faster than Gavin "Jeopardy" Edwards, you have our lasting respect.
-For the fact that this is still just the default template. Better is coming, but we have to get down to some work we promised others.
-For the weird titles at the beginning of every entry imported from the old blog. It'll be fixed soon.
-For the things we ought to have done, and the things we ought not to have done. For the copy of that book of yours we have that we keep meaning to return. For the way we didn't volunteer to help you do the dishes the other night before we left your place. For the long and rambling and slightly needy speech we gave to you on the phone while you were actually in the middle of something of a busy day at work. For recommending that awful restaurant. We're just really sorry.
With much help from S. Redmond today we installed MT at the Wombat File Remote Facility in Jackelope County. A greater-than-average humidity spike, a slight flattening of soil pH fluctuations (confirmed by Don Z. from Jackelope Tech -- thanks, Don!), and the appearance of three Spellman's Warblers were all seen by the gathered crowd as auspicious signs of the installation's success. Commissioner Bold said a few words to mark the occasion, reminding the assembled that "God's will is hidden, but his hand marks all creation, from the loftiest of our endeavors to the most trivial shuffling of the cards of our days."
Following the installation and ceremony, tea and biscuits were served by the Children's Auxiliary.
Good Buddy, Bad Buddy
This New York Times Article does come with an unfortunate and ludicrous "interactive graphic," but it otherwise brings, rightly, to our attention the only technoculture trend of the nineties that the recession hasn't successfully tamed: the tendency of the an element of technology industry to stumble onto a possibility and start conceiving of a business one might build around it, without ever troubling themselves about whether or not the idea is a good one or not.
"Presence Awareness" is an idea which follows a side effect of certain applications. For those of you who have never used an "instant message" service, the deal is that with most of these you set up something like what AOL calls a "buddy list" -- which, whenever you're logged into the net and have the program running, shows whether any of the people you regularly communicate with are also logged in and running. Sort of like having speed dial numbers lit up to indicate whether your friends are at home or not. These programs can also show when someone is "idle" -- that is, when they haven't been using the program for a while, even if they are still logged in.
When I worked at the Business Buzzword Factory, many of us used AOL's service to communicate quickly and informally (and, notably, off to the side of the company's Lotus Notes e-mail; one could commit a speculation to IM that you wouldn't have wanted archived and retrievable on the company system; it also works really well for simultaneous trash-talking when you and your pal are both on an unpleasant conference call with a client). It was kind of cool, and made chatting or whatnot with someone in Chicago or Seattle easier; I used it as well with a few friends, but since most of my pals are not online as consistently as I was at that job, it never became habit. I never bothered to install it at home.
Part of the reason I don't really miss it was a nasty feature: as long as your computer was on and the damned thing was running, you couldn't pretend not to have access to a message. Managers in a distant city would see my name in bold on a buddy list, and hit me with a message at 6:59, as I was shredding the days mistakes and on the phone making plans to consume products and do other patriotic volunteering. "Bill?," the message would come from a Higher-Up in another time zone, "Got a sec?" (N.B. The brave of heart simply walk away, responding the next day that they left without logging off at all; but I am not brave of heart and bluff poorly, a fact my spouse exploits every time we play cards). And I would feel compelled to respond, however grudgingly, "Yes?"
These exchanges, of course, led to last-minute assignments: revisions of the presentation that someone else was putting together for the Director of Strategic Partnerships, or the Chief Strategist for Direct Partners, so that important buzzwords appeared with an appropriate and reassuring frequency; the creation of a Statement of Work out of two e-mails, a one-page spreadsheet, and a reference to a competitor's fully developed website; or the notice that I would be on a conference call with the "Project Explorer Team" tomorrow at cockcrow, so that I could "ramp up" for my role collating the results of their illustrious findings.
Where was I? Oh, right, instant messaging and "presence awareness." My point being that while this is a handy communication tool, the fact that it informs others of your "status" cannot be construed to be a benefit, but is rather an unfortunate side effect, like the way Sudafed makes you sleep through the movie in exchange for not blowing your nose throughout the part where Arnold impales one ethnic-stereotype villain on the limb he just tore off of another cariacture of foreign devilry. That "presence awareness" is something bad, a flaw, a glitch, an irritating byproduct. Like repetetive-motion injuries from typing, or the maddening way everyone talks too loud on their cell phones in public, or how you've got no room on your desk for anything but a computer because your monitor is the size of Jackie Gleason's ass. This is stuff you want to get rid of: you want small computers, polite and restrained cell users, and software that doesn't tell everyone else what the hell you are doing.
From the article: "The prospect of information that can reveal a person's availability at a given moment, anywhere in the world strikes many people as both creepy and intriguing." How about "intriguingly creepy" or "intriguing in its creepiness," or perhaps "so fucking creepy you can't help but be intrigued"?
"The days of phone tag are on the way out," said Sonu Aggarwal, chief executive of Cordant". Merciful lord, we thank thee for thy many blessings. It was really getting to us, all of this phone tag. Really holding us back from greatness. It's hearing from a visionary like Mr. Aggarwal that makes me realize that nothing will stop the passionate entrepreneurs of this great society from painstakingly seeking out the things that make our lives difficult, finding a way to make them truly pernicious, and selling them back to us freshly wrapped in synthetic language.
Sleeping on the Ceiling
It is so peaceful on the ceiling!
It is the Place de la Concorde.
The little crystal chandelier
is off, the fountain is in the dark.
Not a soul is in the park.
Below, where the wallpaper is peeling
The Jardin des Plantes has locked its gates.
Those photographs are animals.
The mighty flowers and foliage rustle;
Under the leaves the insects tunnel.
We must go under the wallpaper
to meet the insect-gladiator
to battle with a net and trident,
and leave the fountain and the square.
But oh, that we could sleep up there...
-Elizabeth Bishop, 1946
In my new futuristic novel, Pepsico and CocaColaCorp are fighting for distribution rights of cola products in Uzbekistan (or wherever). Then, the press leaks a whopper of a newsflash: Pepsi has the Bomb. What will Coke do? Is Mr Pibb a rogue state? Stay tuned.
I'm going to have to discard the editorial "we" here: it just sounds so silly sometimes.
I recently found at the Strand a copy of C.P. Snow's novel The Affair. Snow isn't someone that most Americans are familiar with: no longer current, he also hasn't made it into the small group of midcentury British novelists taught in literature programs. One of the humbling lessons for anyone contemplating a career in writing is to encounter someone like Snow: he had three careers, as a working scientist, as an administrator running research programs, and as a writer who produced what was at the time a highly regarded series of novels, collectively known as Strangers and Brothers. He also famously wrote on the academic split between science and the humanities, and managed a study of Trollope in the bargain.
Point being that despite a rather formidable record of accomplishment, his fame has faded such that I only discovered him through an oblique reference -- the mention of his novel The Search by characters in a Dorothy Sayers novel. It didn't provoke me to go out and find the novel, but years later I picked up an old paperback copy of The Masters at a bookseller's table, because I spotted the unmistakeable Edward Gorey cover art. Although some of these Gorey paperbacks go on the shelf and never get opened (I confess that while I mean to read Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done?, I keep putting it off in favor of comics and reruns of E.R.), something about The Masters prompted me to open it up in the subway back to Brooklyn, and I was hooked.
In his quiet way, Snow is a master storyteller. The Strangers and Brothers books trace the life of Lewis Eliot, an academic and successful barrister, but their particular focus is the culture of an Oxbridge college in the thirties, forties, and fifties: specifically, the masculine, almost clerical culture of Fellows, the faculty who, within the boundaries of their college walls, ran a quasi-autonomous society. Snow's ability is to take the placid and antiquated rituals and practices of a nineteenth-century holdout culture and make it a stage on which the emotions, intellectual and political ambitions, and idiosyncracies of a group of compelling individuals are subtly played out. The result is that issues which wouldn't seem to many people to be sufficient to command interest -- Who will be elected Master of the College? Will a disgraced fellow be reinstated? -- become surprisingly engrossing, and Snow makes no attempt to convince you that these "stand for" anything else. His is a straightforward interest in human beings, what motivates them, and particularly how, in a small society, they pursue or reject or fail at power. And that fascination is contagious.
I finished The Affair late at night, in that kind of quiet moment when a book or a letter resonates more powerfully than at other, more mentally cluttered times. There had been no exciting plot twists, no dazzling flights of prose. But I could feel the presences of these powerful and powerless, single-minded and yet complex men. And I felt that I had learned something: if not about Cambridge, or about human psychology then about what it means to take a real pleasure in reading.
It's time for a new American edition of Strangers and Brothers.
In Which You are Badgered by a Wombat on Groundhog Day
Dan Clowes continues to ascend with Eightball #22. We know what you're going to say. You saw the Ghost World film and you liked it and if you like see his stuff around you'll take a gander at it like when it's in the New Yorker or something, and maybe you'll even pick up that David Boring book in the bookstore and leaf through it...but really, go out of your way to buy a single issue of a comic book? For $4.95? Please.
Well, shut up a minute. Eightball #22 is Clowes' best work to date, better than the original of Ghost World (which the movie couldn't really reproduce). Early issues of Eightball-- before he began serializing Ghost World -- often featured hilarious one-page (or even half-page) strips, gemlike parodies of what a comic "story" might or ought to be. Often these came in the guise of outtakes from some sadly forgotten, demented kids comic from the late 50s or early 60s.
After running these as accompaniments to the unfolding surrealist melodrama "Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron" in the first ten issues of Eightball, Clowes seemed to get increasingly impatient with these whimsies, and focused on longer narratives, devoting most of each issue to one or more: the run of the now-famous Ghost World, plus stories like "Cariacature" and "Like a Weed, Joe." The melancholic sensibility dominated: leavened with the unique, acerbic style and the gestures toward comics of the past. But the little sideshows, which had been so great a delight, were less and less in evidence. Eightballs #20 and 21 were entirely devoted to David Boring-- which combined the adolescent character study of Ghost World with some of the fever-dream quality of "Like a Velvet Glove Cast Iron." No little extra comics at all.
When we picked up Eightball #22, we at first thought that what Clowes was offering was an oblique return to form, a collection of detritus left over after the production of all of his recent extended pieces. Twenty or more little stories, hilarious and morbid, rendered in a cheery, strong style that bristles with a smiling menace, each ending abrubtly, but not before creating a perfectly rendered, enchantingly odd scene. It's only after a few pages that the method is obvious -- a deftly constructed puzzle of a narrative, with multiple points of view and competing narrators, emerges. Disparate characters pop up in one another's stories. There's a dysfunctional version of The Thin Man'sNick and Nora Charles. We meet a frustrated 'zine publisher, and an even more frustrated middle-aged poet who puts off work on his opus to watch Temptation Island. There's a version of Linus van Pelt with a burning, burning sex drive. There's Leopold and Loeb. Mysteries are created, investigated, and eventually dispelled. A stock device for generating tension is deployed, but with a light, almost careless touch: as if Clowes' concern isn't really with his plot (despite how well the plot works to pull everything together), but on the eccentric orbits of all the little planetoids in this cluttered mini-universe. The last page alone is worth the price of admission. When you read it, you'll know why it immediately became so dear to our wrinkled and critical heart.