» Monday, November 22, 2004
Martin and the Betacam battery. It's transmitting information to him that he'll need when the apocalypse comes. No, really.
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Barbara and Suzanne meet the horrible horrible Betacam.
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Our interpreter in Belgium, Barbara, with her children Suzanne and Martin. Martin est fatigué.
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Peevish man at Heidelberg Zoo. While I distract him with the camera, the shrubbery advances on him from the right and takes his wallet.
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This is not a great photo of monkeys, but it's all I've got. Heidelberg Zoo.
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all europe is down with the smartcar, yo.
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Man waiting for bus, Karlsruhe.
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Red building in Karlsruhe.
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Georg S_____ is nervous because I'm in his house taking photos of him without explanation. I kept photographing until he produced this expression.
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Nun with pet pigeon, Feldkirch.
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Matching coats in Heidelberg.
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Streetcorner, Feldkirch.
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Two men in Feldkirch.
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Under the bridge over the Rhein.
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coffee time... um... coffee time...um...
» Saturday, November 20, 2004
Yesterday at a local coffee house I saw a donation cup for the local cell of the Alzheimer's society. I began to imagine the Alzheimer's society as a terrorist network relying on the good will and loose change of coffee drinkers to advance their nefarious (but likely outdated) agenda. I figure that if you staff your cells with Alzheimer's patients, they'll never reveal any information when CSIS rounds them up and wheels them away. Better yet, they'll refer to their interrogators as "Uncle Pete" or "Father St. George". Whatever their agenda is (Free the Falangists!) I intend to fight it with meaningless italicization.
Like so:
Attention, Alzheimer terrorists attempting to conquer Prussia, Rhodesia and the Ottoman Empire! Stop what you're doing immediately and sit with your hands folded on the front steps of the burlesque house until the Doukhobors have passed safely through town. Then approach the constabulary and offer a full accounting of your childhoods! That is all.
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mysterious fragment found scribbled in a back flyleaf
» Friday, November 19, 2004
“... therefore we spent our afternoons exploring the gardens in Palinode’s palace, wandering among the overgrown topiary, chasing spiders along their webs with the tip of a twig, studying the map at the entrance of the hedge maze - now abandoned so long that the hedges had choked off some paths and opened new ones. To enter that maze was to lose your way instantly and turn an afternoon’s diversion into a dark, confusing adventure".
A.G. Morgan, A Summer in Palinode’s Palace (1929) (?)
I found this in a hardbound copy of Dombey & Son when I was nine years old or so. The book rested on the top shelf of my father's bookcase, part of a complete set of Dickens published in 1875 or thereabouts. My father had inherited the set upon graduating from Royal Military College, and though he went to great pains to encourage me to read Dickens, it was clear that these editions were not to be opened or touched. Therefore it was always in secret, at stolen moments on weekend afternoons or even in the predawn hours that I would hoist a chair up in the kitchen and walk it aloft into the living room, my skinny nine year old muscles trembling, and pull down a volume from the shelf. Generally I didn't read any of the text - they were all available in paperback on the lower shelves - but I loved to look at the frontispiece, with its fine crosshatching and expressive faces. I even loved the verso, with its information finely engraved at the foot of the page. Chapman & Hall Publishers. 193 Picadilly. The brief fragment, handwritten in violet fountain pen, first scared me - handwriting in my dad's volumes! - but soon after began to intrigue and then pester me. When I grew a little older I began to look for A Summer in Palinode's Palace in various libraries and used book stores, but without success.
More later.
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the perils of speaking out loud II, or the perils of even listening
» Wednesday, November 17, 2004
After a conversation I overheard in a coffee shop today, I'm pretty sure that the aliens have landed and now walk among us, attempting to learn our ways in order to conquer us. Or in order to order a cup of coffee.
Server (Earthling): What would you like?
Customer (clearly a green tentacled alien stuffed into a human suit): Uh yeah. I'll uh... Americanus doublo... Americano?
Server: You'd like an Americano?
Customer: Yeah, what's that?
Server: It's a cup of coffee with a shot of espresso in it.
Customer: (extending tentacle sensor, hurriedly retracting it): Yeah, okay. What's the double?
Server: That's two shots of espresso.
Customer: Oh, I see.
Server: So, a double Americano?
Customer: Well, I'd like the espresso, but I don't think I have time for the coffee... (N.B. - none of this dialogue is made up) so I guess I'll have one to go.
Server: A double Americano to go?
Customer: Do you think I have time to drink it inside?
Server: (somehow intuiting actual meaning behind near-phatic question, holding up mug) We serve it in a cup this size, so if you're in a hurry you'll want to get it in a to-go cup.
Customer: (mulls it over, establishes neural link with mothership, reaches decision) Oh, I don't have time for that. Maybe I'll get a double espresso for inside.
Perhaps this conversation isn't as strange as I'm making it to be. It certainly seems like a long way round to get a double espresso. Perhaps he was not an alien but some kind of Caffeine Hunter attempting to outsmart his drink.
Outside I heard this conversation:
Dude A: Dude [B], look at this motherfucker. Take a look at this fucking motherfucker!
Dude B [to Dude C, the fucking motherfucker]: Fuck, motherfucker. Fuck. What the fuck's happening?
Dude C, "the fucking motherfucker": Fuck, dude, I don't fucking know. Fuck's happening with you, motherfucker?
I don't know those guys get organized. They all seem to have the same name.
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the perils of speaking out loud I
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When we extended a post-election invite to Americans who wanted to flee to Canada, this really wasn't what we meant.
Sheesh.
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clearing up a misconception
» Tuesday, November 16, 2004
As many of you know, newspapers all over the world have reported that Condoleeza Rice has been tapped to fill Colin Powell's position. If you visit the official White House site, though, you'll see that it's the oil tanker Condoleeza Rice who will be Bush's Secretary of State for his second term in the Oval Office:
Washington (AP) -- The giant Chevron tanker, renamed the Altair Voyager not long before Rice left Chevron to become Bush's National Security Adviser, expressed its excitement at the appointment in a special news conference.
"As the first double-hulled tanker to be appointed Secretary of State, I promise fewer spills, an unblemished safety record and prompt delivery of unrefined policy to all corners of the United States".
"Even though I am only nine years old and officially registered in the Bahamas, I assure you that neither my youth nor my deceptive transnational identity will impede my performance".
The Rice then spewed oil over the assembled reporters. "That's my precious lifeblood and cool drink of water all rolled up in one!" exclaimed the "Suezmax" ship, so termed because its girth is the maximum allowable for passage through the Suez canal.
When asked about its name change in 1999 to the Altair Voyager, it said: "Chevron officials, including my namesake, felt that it was inappropriate to associate a senior Bush cabinet official with the myriad oil spills, human-rights violations and general rapine qualities of the oil industry. It would have been tacky to remind everybody that the Bush administration has forgotten the distinction between those who govern in the people's name and those who kick the Earth's ass to make a buck". The ship continued, "So yeah. They changed my name".
The Rice then spewed more crude on the crowd. "Sorry about that," it remarked. "A reef breached my hull a few days ago".
After repairs, the new Secretary of State plans to make a diplomatic visit to the nations of Nigeria and Angola.
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from the department of dread prescience
» Friday, November 12, 2004
Not two weeks ago I was grousing on this very site about the persistence of Band Aid on the radio. I concurred with Neal Ascheron of the New York Review of Books that Africa functions as some inexhaustible vein of misery from which Westerners feed. And now, twenty years later, a group of pampered Brit-poppers are banding together once more to sing that "Do They Know It's Christmastime" song again. Again. I tell you, we need the Middle East for its oil, China for its Wal-Mart-supply sweatshops, and Africa for its burden of suffering. From various parts of the globe we procure the goods and the energy sources that make our lives easy, and from various bits of Africa we procure the empathy and compassion that allows us to feel at ease with the cheap goods and cheap energy. Everybody rallied behind the "Feed the World" mantra of Band Aid and Live Aid and whatever else, because "the world" in that case simply meant "Ethiopia," and back in 1984 we had the luxury of pretending that Ethiopia's famine came about by a regrettable but natural drought. Never mind a war with Eritrea that had been hacking up the countryside for the last ten years. I wonder whether a new but still Bono'd Band Aid can persuade the pampered millions to part with the 14.99 or whatever it'll cost. THEY'LL JUST DOWNLOAD IT OFF KAZ@A, YOU FOOLS! THE MILLIONS WILL STEAL FOOD RIGHT OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF STARVING... OH... RWANDANS OR LES COTE D'IVORIENS OR WHOMEVER. THOSE WITH ARMS LEFT WILL THROW THEM IN THE AIR AND SCREAM OUT "WHY, CONSUMERS OF INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS? WHY?" And so forth.
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ignition loaf
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Bread generates its own heat. You ever noticed that? Leave a loaf of crappy store-bought sugar 'n' horsehooves bread in its bag out on the counter for an afternoon, then reach in. You're sticking your hand into a puffed latticework of carbohydrate fire. I wonder if the right circumstances ever get together and nudge a loaf of Wonda into full combustion. Strange conflagrations blamed on babysitters, errant Christmas fires that have the forensic teams sniffing at sockets: I bet it's the bread left out on the counter.
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bored blurry blogger spots a mirror
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In the Achat Hotel, Karlsruhe. The Lotus says that the picture is interesting because it makes my head look deformed.
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leisured indigent in Karlsruhe
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This appeared to be two homeless guys and two fixed-address types on the left. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll notice that the man on the far left is giving me an irritable glare.
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streetcorner in downtown Karlsruhe
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a favourably inclined bicycle by the Karlsruhe Waschhaus
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in europe they park all perpendicular like
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We need more of these Smart Cars in North America. They run on pure Fahrvergnugen.
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Karlsruhe girl
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This is one of those photos that you wait for, assuming a statue-like pose until the correct moment suddenly turns its face towards you. I stood in a plaza in Karlsruhe just two blocks down from the shop where I bought my camera, waiting for this little girl to look in my direction.
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in belgium: the man with a bag of lead
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This is Philippe van D_______, a crazy Wallonian who brought a bag of lead to an interview. Don't ask.
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nanowrimotosis
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Oy. My novel is getting away from me, only two days after its launch. Instead of meandering along with the story of a guy bleeding on the floor of a jeepney crawling through rush-hour traffic in downtown Manila, I let my brain devise an impossible task. I gave my brain a path and it duly planted a few hedges and transformed it into a labyrinth of ridiculous ambition. I’ll spare you the pain of reading a novel that requires of me hours of research and a cursory knowledge of eighteenth century Spanish, but here’s a vague outline so far:
In our first installment we watched a man stealing a pair of polka-dot boxers from a clothesline strung across a Manila alleyway. F