Silvina Ocampo

In rooting around for a copy of the Borges edited The Book of Fantasy just now, which doesn't seem to be in print, i was surprised to find that it seemms that no virtually no work of Silvina Ocampo is in print in English translation.

Princeton has a collection of her papers, but what good is that to anyone other than scholars?

I just ordered a copy of Leopoldina's Dream instead of the book i originally sought.

It's fantastic that Roberto Bolaño is in fashion, but it's shameful that other key authors fall by the wayside when they fall out of fashion.

(This is yet another reason for me to stop procrastinating learning Spanish.)

1602 and Captain America

In a moment of insanity, my friend Brandon called me out of nowhere, just to explain his theory of how Marvel is going to bring back Captain America. Brandon almost never calls me, so it left me a little confused as to what catastrophe just happened.

Nope. He just wanted someone to explain his brilliant theory to.

Captain America is dead, but was resurrected, in the alternate timeline of 1602. It almost fits, with timetravel, and his being presumed dead in a future in which superheroes are outlawed. However, a quick check of Wikipedia shows that this Captain America came from somewhere where the Purple Man was president of the U.S.

Damn. Too bad. That had a bizarre WTF appeal. Then again, retcons happen.

The Cosmic Cube resurrection holds.

self-absorbed, unsentimental

I never knew that Borges considered Rabelais "abominable." His loss. I still don't know Rabelais too well, but he impresses me. It's no surprise that Borges had no patience for lengthy books though. In fact, he comes off as an opinionated, arrogant asshole. And he has a sense of cruel humor. This is far better than Williamson's mama's boy. Good. I like this. The Borges biography by Adolfo Bioy Casares look to be fantastic.

It also seems a relief that Borges' actual work is never deconstructed. He reveals nothing.

So is it in English translation yet, or this more tantalizing bits to torment lazy people like myself?

(While i own the Williamson biography of Borges, i have not read it. I'm basing my opinion from reviews. Shallow perhaps, but i have other things to read.)

Incan bones found in Norway

These Incan bones are allegedly 1,000 years old.

This was over on Mirabilis. It's quite odd, although it might be a minor curiosity.

How old is the church? What are the age of the other corpses that it was interred with?

It's more probable that these bones were acquired through graverobbing Spaniards, and passed along as Incan gold saturated Europe.


Now if it turns out that that this Incan lived and died in Sweden... damn. This story has potential.

Liz Cheney is Fred Thompson's foreign policy advisory

So it turns out that Liz Cheney works for Fred Thompson. Sally Quinn is a liar, because even if this game is played, and Cheney does resign, he'll still be holding the reigns. Thompson does indeed seem to be Cheney's horse in the race.

Lupine Howl

Stylus reminds me of a band that completely forgot existed. I'd probably hate the record, but I still want to hear it. Mooney always gets namechecked for being the guitarist for Spiritualized, but as much as i loved Ladies & Gentlemen... it's really his work with Julian Cope that i remember him for, Autogeddon and 20 Mothers. Cope's backing band was the farm team for Spiritualized for awhile:

What's it like having all your musicians working in Spiritualized? (Ra)
Good for the budget. Jason auditioned Donald Ross Skinner and James Eller, too, before he settled on Martin, Doggen, Kev and Thighpaulsandra. I understood the Thighpaulsandra thing as he'd already got Mike Mooneye in the band. And Martin Schellard has always been so good with the string sections on my albums and Jason also knew that keeping Thighpaulsandra around his own friends is the best way to get the best out of him. But I was surprised he picked a mascara'd metaloid like Doggen over Donald Ross Skinner. My accountant is also Jason's accountant and she told me he's even read all the books, including The Modern Antiquarian which she was asked to obtain for him, so he's possibly retro and obviously a little lazy. Have you seen the Spiritualized website? Jason hates the Web 'cause it didn't exist in 1966. Jason got on the phone once and apologised for stealing my musicians. I was double-sweet and told him I'm like the Jesuits, once you're with Cope it's forever no matter who's paying the wages.

So while the piece was cool, contemplating a band who broke away from key album for certain people, it's kinda odd that it doesn't mention Cope once.

Waxman gets a few things off his chest

That's one hell of a letter that Waxman drafted regarded the White House security breaches.

Bring on the subpoenas, as we know that the White House will not make an honest attempt to respond to Waxman's charges.

"some sense of chthonic forces"

Harold Bloom analyzes Obama's poetry. Curious. A candidate who openly wrote poetry.

While i don't listen much to Ben Harper anymore, as he was passed onto me from an old friend of mine who I've lost contact with, he's certainly a lot easier for on my ears than Celine Dion.

making it up as he goes along

Lightning knocked out the receiver for the satellite box for the television last week, so i've not seen the Daily Show (or Colbert Report) since then. Once again, they dug up an old story that is painfully relevant to current news. Why is it that comedy writers are being better journalists than "journalists" like that senile, petulant, supercilious hack David Broder?

Cheney claimed executive privilege back in 2001 for his precious Energy Task Force papers.

Fred Thompson as VP?

It's not going to happen. The plot to oust Cheney is going to be discussed in the future like those people who love alternate histories like to speculate about what would have happened if the plot to assassinate Hitler had worked, but it's not going to happen. Cheney is the real power. He's not going to step aside quietly, unless Fred Thompson is completely Cheney's servant.

I agree with Atrios. It would be a good move to improve Thompson's chances in the 2008 election, but it is fantasy speculation by delusional people on the cocktail circuit of Washington DC who still think that it's politics as usual, and have yet to understand that something very strange and wrong happened in the fall of 2000.

The Iraq War was to spread democracy too, and we're about to turn the corner. Idiots.

that fourth branch of government certainly is powerful

So when it comes to the crunch, Gonzales comes down in favor of the Cheney camp over the Bush camp in regard to torture. The allegiances of this administration are bizarre.

As for Colin Powell's comparison of Condoleezza Rice to Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, i'm baffled. Doesn't he recall that the character came off as a myopic bully, an ineffectual authority figure? It might be accurate, but it's not flattering.

It's no wonder that they cannot assess foreign policy and ethics when they misread literature and film so easily.

still waiting for my copy of Reading Comics to arrive

There's a review of it over on Star-Tribune. No matter how big my TBR stack is, it's probably going to bubble to the top.

"Fantasies generate realities"

So Vargas Llosa says anyway.... Looking at what happened in Iraq, i'd say the paranoid fantasy of a world torn apart by terrorism was a stronger fantasy than the neo-con fantasy of "spreading democracy."

This article in Prospect, "The Democracy of Don Quixote" amused me as the writer does not once ascribe the American adventurism in Iraq as quixotic, but instead addresses the nature of ideology and the unreliable narrator. I'll admit that i'm a little suspicious of his motives, but it was interesting.

Agreed. Publishing gave up on literature a long time ago. Too many new authors seem too interested in filling a niche in a market than in the act of creation.

This book by Jennifer Higgie, Bedlam, sounds promising.

LolSchroedinger

Whew. i'm relieved. That Wikipedia entry is indeed nonsense. Lolcats works better as absurdism and not cuteness. How else does one explain this?

Yeah. That's more like it.

I certainly am not ready for that jelly

Sweet Jesus. Nick Cave performed a karaoke of "Bootylicious" at a benefit for a bid of £70,000. (via Idolator.)

Tender Prey & Henry's Dream have come back into rotation on my iPod after falling out of favor for many years. I still wince at how silly and heavyhanded some of the imagery has become for me, but the absurdity of "Deanna" won me over. Sort of. Lemme get back to that...

never much cared for cats anyway

I don't hate them. Just ambivalent.

Lolcats mystifies me more with each passing week. I thought it was phenomenon mocking banality, with a little dose of Dada, but after reading the Wikipedia entry, it seems that it is about "cuteness." Why do I see subversion everywhere?

Alun's contribution fits more in my vision, and is the first one i recall genuinely being amused by.

from Box Elder to Zuma

Last night, whilst tagging mp3s yet again, i noticed that the riff for Pavement's
Box Elder" was probably copped from Neil Young's "Don't Cry No Tears" from Zuma. That little guitar bit has always charmed me. Neil Young is usually an artist i avoided in the past, originally because he was a favorite of an ex-girlfriend, a strident classic rocker. As i moved on musically, he became attached in my memory to a certain pack of pot-smoking fry cooks who drove BMWs with Deadhead stickers on them. Damien further tarnished him by cursing his weedy voice, constantly comparing him to Kermit the Frog.

I'm constantly embarrassed by my artificial partitions of what i like and don't like based on arbitrary judgments, peer pressure, and tangential associations. If i heard this Zuma track first, would i have liked Pavement when i did? I initially liked to mock Pavement when a friend introduced them to me, just out of goodnatured spite. It wasn't that hard to come around to them after a few months of constant exposure.

My path back to Neil Young isn't through Pavement. Damien relented on his mockery, and conceded that Young's a good songwriter. The Deadheads that i loathed didn't go on to become yuppies. The ex-girlfriend later independently moved onto music that claimed as my own.
Now i'm going back through everything i rejected for possibly superficial reasons, to check if my kneejerk reaction was right.

Post-Barrett Pink Floyd still makes me wince. Pearl Jam is still boring. I don't know what to do with Neil Young. I followed my way back to him by way of Buffalo Springfield, a band that i never completely embraced, despite my '60s fetish. I'm still wrestling with connecting Young to Pavemenet, as it might make the transition easier.

the archives survive

While i figure out what to do with Orbis Quintus, i'm going to indulge in even more frivolous posts than usual. On the off chance that someone out there misses the archives, for the first time, i actually had the opportunity to back them up before the crash/suspension. There was a whole community devoted to the Baton Rouge music scene centered around the Bayou and the Shit Dogs that took on a life of its own in the comments of a single post way back when.

It's a relief to know what little i've learned about archaeology over the past few years is still available if it's really needed. Those notes are more precious to me than one might imagine.

return to exile

It looks like i'm back over here for awhile. I don't quite know what happened to the site, but i'd wager it's more of a problem with the host than the blog itself.

It seems the problem with the real site might be spambots, but i haven't noticed an excess of spam comments in comparison to most weeks.