S.KRAUSE

Make an alligator look like a dachshund

No meth-mouth today.

Links:

• Tom Cruise is Nuts (dot-com).
• radicalcartography.net
• Nuts:
• Europe Geography Quiz

It is not that I have been too busy to write, only that I have been consumed by apathy and have had no desire to do so.

They came by to show the apartment yesterday and today, so I left yesterday afternoon to go shopping, and today I met Jyoti for lunch, tea, etc. After sandwiches for lunch and a break at Steep & Brew we went to HCW to find Sara, but after a look around the philosophy department (5th floor) we concluded that she had already gone, so we went back to Memorial Library, where we found her. Off to Espresso Royale it was. We talked of movies and books and such matters.

The books I returned to the library today:

• Boyle, T. Coraghessan, East Is East. New York: Viking (Penguin), 1990.
• Burgass, Catherine, A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002.
• Dahl, Roald, Revolting Rhymes. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982.
• Dahl, Roald, The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl. London: Michael Joseph, 1991.
• Eco, Umberto, Misreadings. Translated by William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993 (1963, Italian edition)
• Green, Angela, Cassandra's Disk. London: Peter Owen, 2002.
  Twin sisters, one an actress, the other a photographer. Beauty, the beast; the giver, the taker. This novel was a quick yet fascinating read, at times vibrant, engaging, and even a bit surprising.
• Heathorn, Paul, Semi-Detatched. London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001.
  This short novel was a comic joy, very constructed and artificial in its way, yet at the same time touching and at times honest. Liam clearly has issues, but as his stalking and meddling uncover, so do his friends and unaware neighbors Will and Iman. Tym the pot-growing-Pole is a different matter entirely, a refreshing intrusion in a way.
• Hesse, Hermann, The Glass Bead Game. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
• Hesse, Hermann, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse. Translated and with an Introduction by Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam, 1995.
• Murdoch, Irish, The Black Prince. London: The Hogarth Press, 1973 (1984).

I read a few of these, parts of a few more, and meant to read them all.

I shall return more on Wednesday.

Neat books that I do not have:

• Romberg, Thomas A. and Thomas P. Carpenter, Eds., Understanding Mathematics and Science Matters (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. 349 Pages.
• O’Grady, William D., Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergenist Approach To Syntax. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. 246 Pages.

Watched:

• Anakolut: It was on the Swedish Horror DVD and was one of only two or three interesting pieces. All the rest were terribly amateur, with neither vision nor skill.
• Clayboys on Monster Island was also on the Swedish Horror DVD, and was amusing and gross, which I liked.
• Trinity and Beyond (“The Atomic Bomb Movie”) ... narrated by William Shatner ... quite a fascinating tale. I remember hearing about it when I was taking that physics course my last semester at Pomona.

I have been watching little recently, though I have seen the first two episodes of the new seasons of Battlestar Galactica (I approve), as well as Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1 (or should that be Stargates Atlantis and SG-1?). Since I last wrote I watched the first season of Black Books ... the wine episode (Grapes of Wrath I believe) was marvelous.

Instead of watching I have been reading for the most part. In the week before the release of the new Harry Potter book I found myself rereading the first five, not out of expectation of/for the sixth, but simply because I felt like I needed some comfort-books, something light, quick, and juicy. Since then I have taken the plunge and started reading The Uncanny X-Men from the beginning, starting with the first 66 issues, which date from the 1960s. Then I skipped ahead in terms of publication date to read The Hidden Years; there are also a number of Amazing Stories, Spider-Man, Captain American and other comics in which the X-Men appear. Then the series was reloaded in a sense in the mid/late 1970s. A new team was introduced (Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine in particular), Chris Claremont came on board, and greater characterization and longer story arcs became the norm.

I recently finished the Dark Phoenix Saga and Kitty Pryde has joined the X-Men. It is time for Days of Future Past.

—July 26 2005