been awhile // goings-ons

Reading Celine's Journey to the End of the Night right now, it really doesn't get much better.

Otherwise, the news is mostly stressed though instead of thinking about how I have to move and find out if I have a job I end up thinking about those soldiers in Baghdad who were kidnapped and tortured over the weekend while Dick Cheney gave a little roast for Rummy during the reunion of Ford Administration appointees right here in New York (and some Daily News guy was given an award by the group for his coverage of White House affairs! What a surprise, it's like getting an award for being a sycophant). So ol' Dick was yukkin' it up about how Rummy was only the SECOND BEST Secretary of Defense ever (D.C. himself once served that venerable post!) and they were eating swell and meanwhile another couple soldiers found the monsters and were dumped into the twilight in some neighborhood, ringed with traps designed to further desecrate their 20-something bodies if the marines came in too fast.

Something strange is going on in Miami and I won't be too surprised to find out that the plot to terrorize America will become a few conversations, a shared living space and some odd ideas coupled with some fledgling and clumsy attempts to reach out and find some boom materials. FOX will treat it as a kind of Defcon 2 moment with the President of the United States coaching actively to insure our safety and meanwhile in reality the bastard's simply on the sidelines while the House makes sure the real players get as much money as they can stuff into their pockets. Seriously, why not just make the House chambers a big wind machine where rich men can come and grab at money awhile. At least mess up their hair a little.

The liberal blogosphere apparently has a network ("the Townhouse") where they kind of keep in touch and decide what to emphasize and what to bury -- pathetic. One of them was going after some profits illegal, he must have figured why not see what the Republicans are getting all excited about? Found out he liked it and got investigated, so now they're trying to bury the story and you have to wonder why? Don't they get it, transparancy allows you to move ahead faster, because now the questions are going to be about the action, and not just the action where you can regret your mistake, look forward to moving on and not acting so thoughlessly like an asshole in the future, but you spend another year and a day answering questions about the cover-up. Anything with moving parts breaks...a cover-up usually has lots of moving parts because it's attempting to create an alternate reality, which is kind of like making skin.

Good luck with that fuck-os..

A brief note about my students...I've been lucky this year to have such a wonderful group of studenten -- it's not even summer but I miss having them around. I learned a lot from them this year, I feel lucky to have a job where there is so much to think about, all the time.

Walking up Bedford:


Me at the school: