Today my catalog of books hit 700 (its now at 702). The 700th book was The Collectors by David Baldacci, a signed first edition first printing.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jbeckhamlat

Including a signed copy of Myra Beckinridge by Gore Vidal (1968), [1st ed.] from a used book seller in Beverly Hills (from the Northridge Public Library). I had read about Vidal, he seemed very frail, and it was cheaper having library marks. In a way that makes it more interesting, how many sat reading this very book spilling gin . . . one of those famed 20th century titles . . .

Not that I have even cracked it, I just finished a fine Simenon (3 Bedrooms In Manhattan). It was my light read while attempting Pynchon's weighty AGAINST THE DAY, which is enthralling. The new light -only in that is its not physically as heavy as the Pynchon -- -- paperback is INSECT POETICS, about bugs in literature. A fascinating chapter on ants v. bees in Vergil's AENEID. Ants plunder while bee's produce (find a dead beetle or rotting apple opposed to buzzing flower to flower and creating honey). Ants administrate (ROMANS); bee's create . . . .

A picture I took last summer:

Bees fly in splendor and brightness, ants, well are underground burrowing.

There was a non bug statement that I liked as well: Augustus took Rome from a city of brick to a city of marble.

from ugly Caterpillar to beautiful butterfly . . . where is Gregor Samsa? gone buggy. [next is a chapter on performing insects featuring a flea circus, I hope to learn how the little devils were trained ]

ah for the joys of summer...

;-)

I see a lot of blue between the last picture and the previous post. Scroll.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree!

27 December 2006

Here are some pictures from the holidays. Starting with Santa arriving in November's FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS PARADE, the Hancock Center Tree, then some from our apartment.

What do you think?

Now its been 4 months since that crazed knife waving urologist worked on me. Last week he told me: "this is progress as expected, come back in 6 months."

BUT WHO CARES!

Tis the day after Christmas, cold and clear. I am going to make a pre-new years resolution. To find interesting quotes and what not and post them often. For now one will do. I ordered the book TIN DRUM by Gunther Grass. He's one of those you should read something by I feel, and I have not. The title came up in a few things as I read, then I was looking for a list of first lines. Can you beat this:

BOOK ONE
The Wide Skirt

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

So you see, my keeper can't be an enemy. I've come to be very fond of him; when he stops looking at me from behind the door and comes into the room, I tell him incidents from my life, so he can get to know me in spite of the peephole between us. He seems to treasure my stories, because every time I tell him some fairy tale, he shows his gratitude by bringing out his latest knot construction. I wouldn't swear that he's an artist. But I am certain that an exhibition of his creations would be well received by the press and attract a few purchasers. He picks up common pieces of string in the patients' rooms after visiting hours, disentangles them, and works them up into elaborate contorted spooks; then he dips them in plaster, lets them harden, and mounts them on knitting needles that he fastens to little wooden pedestals.

On August 22nd I had a bit of surgery. It was to be outpatient, meaning in and that same day. They kept me over night. Instead of 2 days of recovery I have a doctors appointment in Late December, "by then things should be back to normal."

That is a cheap reason, but I fell behind in everything. Now I hope to return. I may play catch up with what I have read (but with medicines you are to skip what you have missed). For now - well I watched Saturday Night Live last night with high hopes. Hopes that were dashed, a new episode, with a fodder rich news environment. The skits were lame or lame and irrelevant.

If I spend more time here and less time in youtube.com I'd be better.

Last week reuters opened a buro in cyberpace, in Second Life. That is the most interesting news, and maybe the most prescient.

-john....

;-))

Chicago is famous for its Water Towers, but they seem go missing. It could be a kidnapping ring, aliens in search of water, or a monstrous child named Stewie shrinking them for his own reasons. AN ATTEMPT AT A PICTURE. hum, some control issues, but . . . Another frontier crossed, quick tell Spock!


OK, i thought I could do this daily. But . . . I am just too dull, too lazy or too tired. So a simple august observation to start: the days are getting shorter; the shadows longer earlier. We used to open the blinds at 8, now its 7; the sun used be up high all afternoon, now by the time I leave the offices its behind buildings.

I am reading THE DOCTOR IS SICK by Anthony Burgess; if you check my book catalog you will see he is very popular with me. The main character has a brain disorder. The cafeteria served stewed brains (a joke on the patients?); he left the hospital clandestinely wearing his street cloths and slippers . . . His wife is a bit of tramp (with license to be so). The main character, with the brain issue, is a linguist and insist the medical doctors call him Doctor.

so....

Have you ever wondered what God does when His PC crashes? Does he hit Start, All Programs, Accessories, then SYSTEM TOOLS, then SYSTEM RESTORE?

After He/She hits System Restore what divine choices appear when RESTORE MY COMPUTER TO AN EARLIER TIME, and the SELECT A RESTORE POINT pop up? How far back does His calendar go? Does God ever click '?' For help?

Being all knowing and all encompassing I kind of doubt it.

Now, if his calendar goes back, say 2500 years, and he chose that - 500 BC, for His sole (not soul) amusement what would happen to the Present? JUST WHAT WOULD HAPPEN??? Would I be here on the coast of Lake Michigan living as an aborigine? Or in a slave ship in the Agean? Or snorting magic Fumes at Delphi? Where would you be?

Or does He call a Holy HELP Desk, then damn thousands to a small font Hell when the 73rd voice prompt techie says "This is Mohammed, Sorriee but that is not a valid user code, please return to main menu." CLICK . . . Divine Anger then HELL for all?

Peace be With You.

We are on the mend as they say. I still hack myself unconscious, Paul still congested. But much better......

Having finishing Svev's ZENO'S CONSCIOUS, I picked up 2 or 3 books. I stared one on Grammar -Woe is I, easy to read a chapter then go back. What is not an easy read is My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority by Philip Rieff. Egghead is an understatement, the writing is incredible, the ideas way way out there. YOU NEED a relief between chapters. a provocative anachronism . . .

So I read from cover to cover Anthony Burgess's ONE HAND CLAPPING. A funny quick read. Like Muriel Sparks in storyline (He would die again if he saw that comparison, he did not take too seriously little old lady at home typing literature). But then I guess he evolved. ONE HAND CLAPPING is about a married couple in a small English town muddling through life. The quirk: the husband has a photographic memory, they get rich, then . . . There are a lot of literary references, more than references they are so in your face in the book. A lot of nostalgia, an anti TV, anti Newspaper, anti pop culture (1961 ok) sentiments. AND SOME hilarity, some affection, some cheating, and even, even MURDER.

What to read next . . . .

and now a line from the NYT, to help you sleep easier (as the Polaris missile threat that popped up now and then in ONE HAND CLAPPING has abated leaving us but promised joy, right mousie?)

“The great problem is that Al Qaeda has moved far beyond being a terrorist
organization to being almost a state of mind,” said Simon Reeve, author of a
1999 book on Osama
bin Laden and his associates. “That’s terribly significant because it gives
the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”
(NYT 11Aug06 by Scott Shane)

now think along an old verse:

But, mousie, thou art not alane,
In proving foresight may be in vain,
The best laid schemes of mice and men,
Go oft astray,
And leave us nought but grief and pain,
To rend our day.
(Robert Burns, 1759 - 1796, TO TO A MOUSE On turning her up in her nest, with the plough, November, 1785)

HAVE A GREAT WKND!!

SUNDAY
Paul's cold seems to have been morphing to pneumonia the doctor said friday, and gave him a week's worth of strong antibiotics. They both agree I am the source of the cold. I have a vile cough still. Paul no longer has the 102 fever, or the wild shakes and trembling. Its incredible, since his accident any cold goes to bronchitis or pneumonia . . . no retirement in Alaska, that is for sure. Maybe summers?

Hopefully this will be a better week. We spend the weekend watching Mama's Family and Murder She Wrote. A lot of fun actually.

Ah, monday is right around the corner (one doctor monday, Paul's follow up).

Today Paul caught my cold, and colds and Paul equal one thing. Bronchitis in 3 days. (a doctor's appointment for next week was moved to Monday, and may be moved to Friday).

I finished CANNERY ROW and cannot say much I liked it. Its one of those titles that exists in your mind even if you have never read it. You know it means hardscrabble downtrodden folk more or less. But the comedy snuck in is incredible. I read it described as a low class utopia as most inhabitants were content, happy or alright. Those that were not committed suicide - so as not to harsh the buzz of the rest??

Got a bit cooler, not getting warm again. I am taking plop plop fizz fizz alka seltzer cold for my cold. Tired......

Another HOT day in Chicago. The walk to work was fine, this morning. I did cut through the hospital (Northwestern). It covers 2 blocks, the ground floors are mostly large open lobbies. The walk home, well when you open the oven to look at roasting chicken, that blast of hot air is what the walk home was. BUT IT IS THUNDERING, lightning and rain, and the temp has dropped from the mid 90s (heat index 106) to the high 70s. I opened the window, it was like opening the dishwasher right when it beeps finished. A bit steamy.

Still reading Cannery Row, and that short story is beautiful. Memorable characters, events, place names. This Steinbeck did know how to put words together in phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into grafs, and graphs into chapters. A struggling couple, the husband says he does not want a picture of ham cut from a magazine on a platter again. Laugh then cry.

Today an old copy of PEYTON PLACE arrived, for Paul. He loves that movie. I have never sat through it, but read about the book. For me a few books, including WOE IS I - a book on how to write clearly. And a few others.

Time to catalog!

Tuesday. Very hot. I stayed home today, a sick day. Allergies or a summer cold. Reading Cannery Row (a short story by Steinbeck). A lot of fun. Paul and I went to the farmer's market, a Tuesday summer tradition. Outside for a hour and we were near dead. And you?

Almost 100 degrees today, and tomorrow and again on Tuesday. Thank God global warming is a liberal fantasy.

Today I rated 3 books out of the 568 I have in my catalog, under links at the side here, MY BOOKS. I rated them all 5 stars -the highest rating. First is ANTHONY BURGESS's long novel Earthly Powers, at 600 plus pages; then Victor Pelevin's THE LIFE OF INSECTS, shorter, at 180 packed fantasy page; then lastly George Saunders' The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, the shortest, satirical fantasy at 144 pages, a divine escape. Burgess is demanding, expansive, realistic; the Life of Insects, well the main characters are mosquito's, ants, and more in an allegory where thy pull Gregor Kafka switchs; to the Reign of Phil, a satire on politics today with a bit of Animal Farm here and there.

So much to read, so little time. A crescent moon set about a half hour ago, an incredible orange color. I saw on tv that jet contrails may block out stars in the night sky in 50 years. Where would be if the ancients had not had the stars to wish on, to dream on, to think about?

Notice, I have learnt to insert links . . .

There was an article in the WSJ on Saturday about the moguls of MYSPACE.com People who use it as their 'market' for things or publicity. Made me wonder if there could be a myspace election for president. Register, join a group (there a a million of them, talk about a balkanized electorate), become an activist . . . of course the internet is just tubes and wires . . . I doubt if there are may Taliban types in burka's, or prayer groups in myspace, from what I've read its packed with degenerates, almost 100 million of them. (I do have an account, solely for research purposes of course). Oh look that screenname: Woman in a Burka and that aol Chatting Nun and that wild posting amazon shopping woman with a large Bible just burned (hacked) down a cyber theater!

God it was hot here in Chicago today. 13 witches melted to nothing before noon, thank god warlocks don't melt (unless its the 3rd Tuesday of a month with an r in it). I went out at 9:15 to the grocery story, it was delivered. Then I stayed in and watched TV and read papers. Saturday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece on inhabitants of myspace.com and the reality its is becoming. I wonder if there will be an election in myspace land? The internet is just a bunch of tubes you know! But then I still believe in books . . . does that make me a 'nostalgic elitist"? Nah, I would be flexible, a book published as a web page with room for comments after each 2000 words would be fun. Communal, opposed to the solitary nature of reading text on a printed FINITE page (those people who read alone are plotters, thinking their own thoughts, plotters!).

I only ordered two books today, but I did buy one, a whim precipitated by a borders coupon (25% off, who could resist). I have a lit criticism book, but the cover of TURING'S DELIRIUM caught my eye, then the title overpowered my mind. The author, Edmundo Paz Soldán is Bolivian. A different cultural point of view for SCI FI/ Fiction finished me off. A check for reviews pointed to this (still in a pile here):

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/books/review/16iyer.html?ex=1154404800&en=0be2ea72cd81c02b&ei=5070

a snip, how does it sound to you (opposite of newspapers and cnn?)

The author, who teaches at Cornell, is one of the charter
members of the McOndo
literary movement, an unmagic-realism camp that
believes South America today
lives in a different universe from the one in
Gabriel García Márquez's sleepy,
never-never Macondo, with its
ascending angels and insomnia plagues. It is a
point of pride with
McOndoites that, as here, the kids in their novels carry
"the latest Nokia,"
central events take place at an Internet cafe called Portal
to Reality and
Thomas Pynchon's recurring notion of entropy is at once honored
and updated
in a reference to a Web site called attrition.org. In
Paz Soldán's previous novel, "The Matter of
Desire," the protagonist goes
to a Bolivian cafe called Berkeley to talk to a
local band called Berkeley
about his deceased father's coded novel called — what
else? — "Berkeley."
In "Turing's Delirium," we first meet the most alive
flesh-and-blood
character — a drug-addicted prostitute — at a McDonald's. She
does herself
up at times as a "University
of California
cheerleader" (perhaps





unaware that the dreamspace of the
characters in the
new book seems to have relocated to the home of both global
circuit making
and antiglobalization protests, Seattle). (NYT, 16july06).

i can not resist this one....

It is very very warm in Chicago. All day and all night long. Tiring . . . all you can do to walk to and from work. It is, maybe, HELL?

Today started with an exciting 8:30 dentist appointment where a temporary crown was replaced with a fixture meant to last a lifetime (or what's left of it). Very simple, it just snapped off and then there wasn't even any drilling. And it was a hot humid day. SO we had takeout pizza from Gino's East. Paul found a hair -about 2 inches long - as he finished his first slice. God knows what I ate. The meal ended suddenly. Its now known as Gino's East Hair Palace. I called to tell them, they said 'impossible, we all wear hairnets.' Well neither Paul nor I have black hair.

This weekend I hope to figure out if I can put pictures on this blog thing.

OK, I spellcheck this blog, right. SO see 'blog' as in blog thing. THE SPELLCHECKER did not like the word BLOG! and made suggestions! like Block, blowes, bloke!! God, it does not like spellcheck either!....

be well. TECHNO POWER RULES!

An early morning post:

Think you have read the ultimate in absurd?

http://www.babelguides.com/view/work/54681

I had to stick this in early. This page, babel guides, covers literature in translation. When you really want to escape its like a double feature: fictional fantasy from a different culture. Check it out:

http://www.babelguides.com/

Ah, almost time for the Farmers Market. Maybe some beets?

Mondays are fundays. I got to work: my PC's connection to the net was dead. TECHIES came, 'its in the wiring' so it was booted to a different tech group. More time. Without a computer there is nothing to do. No email, no searches, can't even type a note sans WORD. Read and cleaned my desk......

The big search of the day was for myself: the screenplay for SLEEPER -1973. I found a messy copy posted by an individual. In a nutshell its about a guy who went to the hospital for a simple routine (woody Allen); and does not come out of the fog so he's frozen. He is brought back in the future and is labeled a rebel. Madcap with meaning. I ordered the DVD . . . as well as a few books. (today a nice copy of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE arrived, check my catalog - I had the dvd). I did order "Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English" for obvious reasons.

and a WILLIAM GOLDING OMNIBUS (including Lord of the FLIES, my copy is missing in action) . . .

my book catalog now has 541 titles, with 129 of them signed by authors (a few by illustrators tho).

Its late Sunday night , 3 minutes left. I hoped for 30 minutes a day at this. But I could fall (COULD YOU SAY?) into inane chatter. That's what I am sure 99% of cellphone conversations are.

Just ordered a copy of PEYTON PLACE (the book) for Paul. He has books for his favorite movies (Rebecca, Mr. Blanding's Dream House, The Graduate . . .). From alibris -- my first alibris purchase.

I added a book to my amazon cart. I add anything and everything, them move it to buy later. Then amazon notifies me if the price has changed, IDEALLY DROPPED, and I think about the item again when its achieved better bargain status.

Today's book was WOE IS I, it was mentioned in a NYT article, quoted actually,

THAT night I read in “Woe Is I” by Patricia T. O’Conner that the semicolon is
like a blinking yellow light between two connected but independent sentences.
You read through the first sentence, but before going to the next, the semicolon
warns you to slow down and look both ways. (The Semicolon Was Our Blinking
Caution Light By JAMIE CALLAN, NYT, July 23)

I wonder if that is some kind of product placement? But I could understand the explanation and if I am going to write this daily I'll need a great deal of guidance. I have 539 books in my online catalog now.... do I really need another title?

your link to the spook world:

http://econo-girl.blogspot.com/ the blog of a former CIA contract worker see the NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/washington/22intel.html

I thought the most fascinating story in the NYT was "Feeling Strains, Baptist Colleges Cut Church Ties," by Alan Finder, about Baptist liberal arts colleges breaking away from State Baptist Conventions, some of the telling quotes include:

Dr. Crouch said. “I sat for 25 years and watched my denomination
become much more narrow and, in terms of education, much more interested in indoctrination.’’

and

Professor Key said. “In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In
education, you’re searching for truths.’’

and:

Dr. York asked the college to look for a religion professor who would teach theologically conservative positions.

“You ought to have some professor on your faculty who believes
Adam and Eve were the first humans, that they actually existed,’’ Dr. York said.

Isn't that broad minded tolerant fundamentalism akin to wild eyed Islamic clerics exhorting crowds to act mindlessly to destroy the infidels? But the colleges are breaking away in many cases.

Paul and I walked downtown today. On the way we found oursevles passing by hundres of pro-Palestine, anti Israel Arabs. Then we found ourselves with them as they marched across the Michigan avenue bridge chanting FREE FREE PALESTINE (we were not chanting).

I bought a BED in a BAG at Carsons, that way I don't need to expend thought on color coordination.

HUM, Seems if I want to enter something this is where it should be done. As I said, so many blanks, either they (mysterious cyber gods, look like tubes I hear) move them or I forget where they are. How does this look?
-JOHN

I am learning how to blog, on my own. Something any 15 year old can do. I did change my signature line on my hotmail, to: When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London. - Bette Midler. (It had been a quote by Oscar Wilde, the quote master -“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.” -- Oscar Wilde)

Now to figure this out, reading books is easier though.

What is going on here?