Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Thair is na salve may saif the of thy sair!
Here's a good online glossed text of the Testament of Cresseid. If you search for "Complaint of" it will take you down to her lament for being a leper and a betrayer. Yes reading it involves a bit of work, but if you say it out loud you can hear a fifteenth-century Scottish voice, which is cool, and anything written by Seamus Heaney is also hard work to read, and all you get in return is the twenty-first-century Ulster English in which, a friend of mine pointed out, all poetic translations of medieval material seem to be written these days.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Translacyoun
I've never read Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf. I read some very interesting reviews, in which the bits quoted as particularly good all seemed to be precisely the places where he had hardly translated at all. But I'm fortunate enough to be able, with a good annotated edition, to read Beowulf without needing to translate it, and I'd rather do that than read someone else's version. Nonetheless, I do realise that Beowulf is pretty far removed in language from most people's leisure time, and that a translation is probably a necessary thing.
But I was very sad to see that he has now published a translation of Henrysoun's Testament of Cresseid. I encountered that poem in an anthology while I was doing my GCSEs -- I used to read poetry anthologies, and then follow up any bits I particularly liked. It really is not that hard to read in the original; the anthology just had a few marginal glosses for difficult words, and with those supplied it was possible to read it straight off. You might as well translate Shakespeare. (Actually one of our more annoying English teachers made us do that once.) We were allowed to write essays on our own topics for GCSE, so I wrote one on the Lament of Cresseid, which starts "O sop of sorrow sonken into care", though I can't remember any further now. It was a terrible essay because I knew nothing of the background or context -- I pointed out the intensive use of alliteration, which I didn't realise was just how early English verse worked -- but still, I'd count it as a major part of what led me to do medieval things at university. I'd encountered Chaucer before, but it was Henrysoun which led me on to look out harder and harder stuff, like a gateway drug. (Including Gawain and the Green Knight, which Simon Armitage has translated, entirely unnecessarily.) The fact that Heaney has translated it makes it sound like it needs translating; it's not making the poem more accessible but less. I hope people will still put the original in anthologies, for nerdy kids to discover and enjoy.
Translation culture is certainly something which you need to learn to move away from at university. I did Latin GCSE and no further, and if I didn't memorise entire translations of the set texts it was only really because I was too lazy. In our Part I Old English and Latin classes certain of my contemporaries, who had not been too lazy back at GCSE and A level, would ask as we went through texts for definitive translations which they could write down and later memorise, and the teachers would, of course, refuse to be bound down to a single order of words. I'd be interested to know if this attitude among students is more or less of a problem all these years later.
Anyway, I realised the other day that I have never read Julian of Norwich in the original. My Penguin paperback, which I picked up when I was a sixth-former and Penguin classics had a lot of authority for me, is in modern English. So I have got hold of a student's edition of the Long Version, which starts like this:
Translating that is ridiculous. I'm going to read it in stages, because I enjoyed the discipline of working through Cassiodorus on the Psalms.
In news of a different order, there has been a real spate of funny autotune stuff on Youtube recently, like this crying baby, and this autotuned news. And I do like this terrifying advert for cheese curry. (I think it's the Japanese equivalent of pot noodle.)
But I was very sad to see that he has now published a translation of Henrysoun's Testament of Cresseid. I encountered that poem in an anthology while I was doing my GCSEs -- I used to read poetry anthologies, and then follow up any bits I particularly liked. It really is not that hard to read in the original; the anthology just had a few marginal glosses for difficult words, and with those supplied it was possible to read it straight off. You might as well translate Shakespeare. (Actually one of our more annoying English teachers made us do that once.) We were allowed to write essays on our own topics for GCSE, so I wrote one on the Lament of Cresseid, which starts "O sop of sorrow sonken into care", though I can't remember any further now. It was a terrible essay because I knew nothing of the background or context -- I pointed out the intensive use of alliteration, which I didn't realise was just how early English verse worked -- but still, I'd count it as a major part of what led me to do medieval things at university. I'd encountered Chaucer before, but it was Henrysoun which led me on to look out harder and harder stuff, like a gateway drug. (Including Gawain and the Green Knight, which Simon Armitage has translated, entirely unnecessarily.) The fact that Heaney has translated it makes it sound like it needs translating; it's not making the poem more accessible but less. I hope people will still put the original in anthologies, for nerdy kids to discover and enjoy.
Translation culture is certainly something which you need to learn to move away from at university. I did Latin GCSE and no further, and if I didn't memorise entire translations of the set texts it was only really because I was too lazy. In our Part I Old English and Latin classes certain of my contemporaries, who had not been too lazy back at GCSE and A level, would ask as we went through texts for definitive translations which they could write down and later memorise, and the teachers would, of course, refuse to be bound down to a single order of words. I'd be interested to know if this attitude among students is more or less of a problem all these years later.
Anyway, I realised the other day that I have never read Julian of Norwich in the original. My Penguin paperback, which I picked up when I was a sixth-former and Penguin classics had a lot of authority for me, is in modern English. So I have got hold of a student's edition of the Long Version, which starts like this:
This is a revelacion of love that Jhesu Christ, our endles blisse, made in xvi shewynges, of which the first is of his precious crownyng of thornes. And ther in was conteined and specified the blessed Trinitie with the incarnacion and the unithing betweene God and man's sowle with manie fayer schewynges and techynges of endelesse wisdom and love, in which all the shewynges that foloweth be groundide and joyned.
Translating that is ridiculous. I'm going to read it in stages, because I enjoyed the discipline of working through Cassiodorus on the Psalms.
In news of a different order, there has been a real spate of funny autotune stuff on Youtube recently, like this crying baby, and this autotuned news. And I do like this terrifying advert for cheese curry. (I think it's the Japanese equivalent of pot noodle.)
Sunday, 12 July 2009
How do we all just get along?
I recommend the Early Book Society conference, it has a nice atmosphere. I went down to Exeter to give a paper there, and stayed at my parents' instead of the student dorms, and caught up with my brother and sister-in-law, and the ever-changing nephew, who is really very merry at the moment. He has discovered his feet, and he thinks they're great.
Unfortunately I picked the weekend when my difficult uncle was visiting. I've certainly had worse arguments with him. We did argue about evolution -- my parents and I were saying why we think evolution is just clearly something which happens, and my uncle was saying that he has trouble with the changes from species to species, but not changes within species. But then he dumb-founded us all by saying that the two creation stories in Genesis refer to two different creations -- people who can be saved, and those who can't. Now I don't know much about the history of heresies, but that sounds to me like it could be a new one. (There are so many obvious objections to it that it might be new simply because no one has been that dumb before.) My uncle is very objectionable in many ways, but just occasionally I find myself admiring his constancy in objectionableness. Whichever way you slice him, he's objectionable. We had a long conversation about fanaticism, and I amused myself by making sure I got in one reference to right-wing American christians with their red heifers for every time he mentioned fanatical islamists. Then when we were talking about free will he reminded me of the time I kicked him for denying free will about 15 years ago, and my mother told me off about it all over again, so he did sort of win that one.
And in the middle of conversation my uncle's vague, amiable, but very prudish wife said a (Rochester-style) rude word. I think she must have not known what it meant, and I wondered for a bit if I should tell her. This is a woman who spells out any word she considers to have any sexual or adult connotations when in the presence of children, which used to puzzle me a lot when I was little, not because I didn't understand -- I was a precocious speller -- but because I didn't understand why she was doing it.
My uncle and his wife have never lived that far away from me, and even if they're much more prosperous than my parents they aren't from a totally different world -- my dad and my uncle grew up together. But sometimes they're so alien to me that it hurts my head to think of how many people there are in the world. How on earth do we get on as much as we do? I've decided it's actually amazing that there aren't more wars.
Unfortunately I picked the weekend when my difficult uncle was visiting. I've certainly had worse arguments with him. We did argue about evolution -- my parents and I were saying why we think evolution is just clearly something which happens, and my uncle was saying that he has trouble with the changes from species to species, but not changes within species. But then he dumb-founded us all by saying that the two creation stories in Genesis refer to two different creations -- people who can be saved, and those who can't. Now I don't know much about the history of heresies, but that sounds to me like it could be a new one. (There are so many obvious objections to it that it might be new simply because no one has been that dumb before.) My uncle is very objectionable in many ways, but just occasionally I find myself admiring his constancy in objectionableness. Whichever way you slice him, he's objectionable. We had a long conversation about fanaticism, and I amused myself by making sure I got in one reference to right-wing American christians with their red heifers for every time he mentioned fanatical islamists. Then when we were talking about free will he reminded me of the time I kicked him for denying free will about 15 years ago, and my mother told me off about it all over again, so he did sort of win that one.
And in the middle of conversation my uncle's vague, amiable, but very prudish wife said a (Rochester-style) rude word. I think she must have not known what it meant, and I wondered for a bit if I should tell her. This is a woman who spells out any word she considers to have any sexual or adult connotations when in the presence of children, which used to puzzle me a lot when I was little, not because I didn't understand -- I was a precocious speller -- but because I didn't understand why she was doing it.
My uncle and his wife have never lived that far away from me, and even if they're much more prosperous than my parents they aren't from a totally different world -- my dad and my uncle grew up together. But sometimes they're so alien to me that it hurts my head to think of how many people there are in the world. How on earth do we get on as much as we do? I've decided it's actually amazing that there aren't more wars.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Expect trivia
I do like this song off of La Roux's album:
Also, I know they're all pretty much business as usual, but I've been listening a lot to the Sophie Ellis Bextor heartbreak song, David Guetta's "When love takes over", and Cascada's summer swine flu hit "Evacuate the dance floor (I'm infected with the beat".
I quite like this watch which reminds you that you're going to die. There's something supremely triumphant about constantly remembering your own mortality, I suppose because if you can cope with that you can cope with anything. I've been writing a paper partly on the Corpus manuscript of the Ancrene Wisse, a Middle English guide for women who had themselves walled into small rooms on the sides of churches. They would dig a little more of their own grave every day, and then kneel in it to say their prayers. But if you can own that, what can own you? Not much. (And as a way of life it certainly worked for Julian of Norwich.) I've never been 100% convinced that having a slave whisper "Don't forget you're going to die" into your ear during a Roman triumph was entirely a deflating act; it's pretty much saying "but nothing else can touch you". Although I do dislike the Corpus clock a lot, which I suppose is a bit hypocritical of me; maybe it all comes down to aesthetics really. I think it's partly because the Corpus clock is rather hysterical and seems to be about panicking in the face of death rather than just getting on with things, and because although it claims to be mechanical it couldn't keep time without a software intervention which corrects it every five minutes. That's not insouciant; that's not "Death be not proud".
Also this watch with a blank face is quite good.
Furthermore here are some disconcerting vintage adverts; here is a map which shows something very true about Wales; and a website which will sell you an authentic rug about war. Actually that last one isn't trivia, but rather upsetting in some way I can't quite put my finger on. The clash of the domestic and the horrific? I don't know. Maybe it's something about these rugs being sold in the far-off land which provided a lot of the weaponry depicted. *Ponders*
Also, I know they're all pretty much business as usual, but I've been listening a lot to the Sophie Ellis Bextor heartbreak song, David Guetta's "When love takes over", and Cascada's summer swine flu hit "Evacuate the dance floor (I'm infected with the beat".
I quite like this watch which reminds you that you're going to die. There's something supremely triumphant about constantly remembering your own mortality, I suppose because if you can cope with that you can cope with anything. I've been writing a paper partly on the Corpus manuscript of the Ancrene Wisse, a Middle English guide for women who had themselves walled into small rooms on the sides of churches. They would dig a little more of their own grave every day, and then kneel in it to say their prayers. But if you can own that, what can own you? Not much. (And as a way of life it certainly worked for Julian of Norwich.) I've never been 100% convinced that having a slave whisper "Don't forget you're going to die" into your ear during a Roman triumph was entirely a deflating act; it's pretty much saying "but nothing else can touch you". Although I do dislike the Corpus clock a lot, which I suppose is a bit hypocritical of me; maybe it all comes down to aesthetics really. I think it's partly because the Corpus clock is rather hysterical and seems to be about panicking in the face of death rather than just getting on with things, and because although it claims to be mechanical it couldn't keep time without a software intervention which corrects it every five minutes. That's not insouciant; that's not "Death be not proud".
Also this watch with a blank face is quite good.
Furthermore here are some disconcerting vintage adverts; here is a map which shows something very true about Wales; and a website which will sell you an authentic rug about war. Actually that last one isn't trivia, but rather upsetting in some way I can't quite put my finger on. The clash of the domestic and the horrific? I don't know. Maybe it's something about these rugs being sold in the far-off land which provided a lot of the weaponry depicted. *Ponders*
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Just my usual bad-tempered moaning
1. Piety
A journalist friend of mine is doing Guardian stuff in Italy this week, and got something in the paper the other day, which I think is quite impressive of her. The story is that apparently the pope has decided that the bones they found a while ago in Rome are those of St Paul. It struck me how very odd it is that this seems to me of no religious significance whatsoever, although it's a nice historical curiosity, while to many people officially of the same faith this would be a Big Thing. Sometimes I feel very isolated in my (dour but honest) Protestantism, because all Christians in Cambridge seem to be Anglo-Catholics or Catholics and very interested in bones and vestments. It often feels like there are many ways in which Protestantism has more in common with atheism than with Catholicism -- or at least, with certain types of honest atheism, rather than the pious kind. I suppose that's a rather disrespectful way to refer to both Catholicism and pious atheism. But piety has been getting me down a bit recently: the piety of the Guardian; the piety of academia; the various different conflicting pieties of what Cambridge is All About. So many of my conversations seem to involve a mutual pleasant outrage about this that or the other. I have to take a fair share of blame for this -- it's become a sort of conversational ploy I've fallen into, for when you want to have one of those conversations which is more about chatting than about anything you actually say, like the human equivalent of searching another chimpanzee's back hair for fleas. It would be a habit worth breaking, if only I were better at real conversations.
But I'm also pretty certain that piety is necessary and important in some sort of stripped-back way. I read some stuff not long ago, probably on the graun website, where people were talking about the pervasive nature of superstition these days. One example someone had was that he would offer a cardigan around at a lecture, getting people to raise their hand if they were prepared to wear it; and then see how many hands went down when he told them it had once belonged to Fred West "even when he told them it had been dry-cleaned". Another example was people being less willing to throw darts at a dartboard when it had a photograph of a baby's face on it. I don't think that either of these are actual examples of superstition at all. I don't want to wear Fred West's cardigan; it's not because I think it's imbued with evil such that I would become a sleep-walking murderer or some such like in a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episode, it's because the things he did were so truly foul and terrible that I would not want to have any association or symbol of that about me. I would prefer not to pierce a photo of a baby's face with darts, not because I think that in a voodoo-esque way some baby somewhere will feel transferred pain, but because it would be a symbolic act of violence against a child, and tasteless. I don't think either of these things are illogical, once you accept that we are quite symbolic creatures. Maybe I'm not quite right in labelling them as piety either; what I mean is a sort of quiet respect given to things which deserve it. I wouldn't like to be among the people who didn't feel a little distaste for wearing Fred West's cardigan, dry-cleaned or not, or who stabbed pictures of babies' faces without a second thought.
A related annoying thing in the Guardian was a piece saying that we're all pagans now. Apparently to be a pagan you just have to believe that there is a higher power or powers; and revere nature. This is clearly nonsense -- for one thing it would make my mother the world's first Calvinist pagan. She doesn't like church buildings, and says she could never feel closer to God in a cathedral than in a wood. She's currently wrestling with her conscience about whether she can remain a member of their local church when it spends so much money on building maintenance and so little on people, and if she had her way the churches of England would be torn down or handed over to some government heritage body and the actual church, the people, freed to meet in community centres, or parks when it was sunny. I think this would be both great, and a terrible shame -- a respect for buildings where people have worshipped for centuries is a piety I'm not quite ready to abandon. But just imagine a church without flower-arranging rotas -- it would probably immanentise the eschaton.
2. Still, life goes on.
Despite all this, life still has good things to offer. For example, would you like your business card lasered onto a piece of beef jerky? Of course not -- why on earth would you? But I feel that the possibility enlarges mankind.
Also the new Dizzee Rascal/Calvin Harris collaboration can be heard here, via popjustice, on Zane Lowe's radio show. Dizzee Rascal always cheers me up -- I love to think of it all from the perspective of his school-teachers.
Plus talking of conversations, there's a certain aged but eminent emeritus professor who has become increasingly physically frail, and very quiet in conversation. But the other day at lunch he was suddenly much more like his old self. I asked him how he was finding the fish. "My fish", he said, "is delish!" Ah, I said, but how was his baked potato? "My baked potato", he replied at once, "is only so-so." It made me immensely happy. I couldn't have written out the entire course of that conversation beforehand, and I hope his better spirits continue.
A journalist friend of mine is doing Guardian stuff in Italy this week, and got something in the paper the other day, which I think is quite impressive of her. The story is that apparently the pope has decided that the bones they found a while ago in Rome are those of St Paul. It struck me how very odd it is that this seems to me of no religious significance whatsoever, although it's a nice historical curiosity, while to many people officially of the same faith this would be a Big Thing. Sometimes I feel very isolated in my (dour but honest) Protestantism, because all Christians in Cambridge seem to be Anglo-Catholics or Catholics and very interested in bones and vestments. It often feels like there are many ways in which Protestantism has more in common with atheism than with Catholicism -- or at least, with certain types of honest atheism, rather than the pious kind. I suppose that's a rather disrespectful way to refer to both Catholicism and pious atheism. But piety has been getting me down a bit recently: the piety of the Guardian; the piety of academia; the various different conflicting pieties of what Cambridge is All About. So many of my conversations seem to involve a mutual pleasant outrage about this that or the other. I have to take a fair share of blame for this -- it's become a sort of conversational ploy I've fallen into, for when you want to have one of those conversations which is more about chatting than about anything you actually say, like the human equivalent of searching another chimpanzee's back hair for fleas. It would be a habit worth breaking, if only I were better at real conversations.
But I'm also pretty certain that piety is necessary and important in some sort of stripped-back way. I read some stuff not long ago, probably on the graun website, where people were talking about the pervasive nature of superstition these days. One example someone had was that he would offer a cardigan around at a lecture, getting people to raise their hand if they were prepared to wear it; and then see how many hands went down when he told them it had once belonged to Fred West "even when he told them it had been dry-cleaned". Another example was people being less willing to throw darts at a dartboard when it had a photograph of a baby's face on it. I don't think that either of these are actual examples of superstition at all. I don't want to wear Fred West's cardigan; it's not because I think it's imbued with evil such that I would become a sleep-walking murderer or some such like in a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episode, it's because the things he did were so truly foul and terrible that I would not want to have any association or symbol of that about me. I would prefer not to pierce a photo of a baby's face with darts, not because I think that in a voodoo-esque way some baby somewhere will feel transferred pain, but because it would be a symbolic act of violence against a child, and tasteless. I don't think either of these things are illogical, once you accept that we are quite symbolic creatures. Maybe I'm not quite right in labelling them as piety either; what I mean is a sort of quiet respect given to things which deserve it. I wouldn't like to be among the people who didn't feel a little distaste for wearing Fred West's cardigan, dry-cleaned or not, or who stabbed pictures of babies' faces without a second thought.
A related annoying thing in the Guardian was a piece saying that we're all pagans now. Apparently to be a pagan you just have to believe that there is a higher power or powers; and revere nature. This is clearly nonsense -- for one thing it would make my mother the world's first Calvinist pagan. She doesn't like church buildings, and says she could never feel closer to God in a cathedral than in a wood. She's currently wrestling with her conscience about whether she can remain a member of their local church when it spends so much money on building maintenance and so little on people, and if she had her way the churches of England would be torn down or handed over to some government heritage body and the actual church, the people, freed to meet in community centres, or parks when it was sunny. I think this would be both great, and a terrible shame -- a respect for buildings where people have worshipped for centuries is a piety I'm not quite ready to abandon. But just imagine a church without flower-arranging rotas -- it would probably immanentise the eschaton.
2. Still, life goes on.
Despite all this, life still has good things to offer. For example, would you like your business card lasered onto a piece of beef jerky? Of course not -- why on earth would you? But I feel that the possibility enlarges mankind.
Also the new Dizzee Rascal/Calvin Harris collaboration can be heard here, via popjustice, on Zane Lowe's radio show. Dizzee Rascal always cheers me up -- I love to think of it all from the perspective of his school-teachers.
Plus talking of conversations, there's a certain aged but eminent emeritus professor who has become increasingly physically frail, and very quiet in conversation. But the other day at lunch he was suddenly much more like his old self. I asked him how he was finding the fish. "My fish", he said, "is delish!" Ah, I said, but how was his baked potato? "My baked potato", he replied at once, "is only so-so." It made me immensely happy. I couldn't have written out the entire course of that conversation beforehand, and I hope his better spirits continue.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Aged Ps
My mother tells me she is going to do a parachute jump. I asked her if it was revenge for all the times we've made her worry, and she reacted with surprise at the idea that we might worry. I said surely she would worry if me or my brother did a parachute jump, and she said that since it's very safe she might as well worry about me crossing the road in Cambridge. Then she paused for thought and admitted that she does worry about me crossing the road in Cambridge. So I had to reassure her that I am always very careful when I cross the road. We left the conversation at this point, by mutual consent.
My father is involved in a court case and has had to swear a legal oath about a hermit. This is very much the sort of thing which might have happened in the eleventh century, and got recorded in passing in one of the charters I work on. My dad was friends with the hermit through their mutual love of trees, but whereas my father somehow lives in the world, the hermit had retired to a hut in the woods somewhere and made an amazing garden or arboretum. Now the hermit's dead my father is involved in trying to save the garden, which means proving how long it had been under cultivation. My father is able to provide evidence about this through his records of the plants he had donated for the purpose, and the oath was specifically about the rosa cymosa named after me, which apparently flourishes there, somewhere hidden in the north of Cornwall.
In other news, apparently if you want a cigarette you should ask someone in their right ear. Also from boingboing, a leech-powered barometer. And I have broken my toe, but not badly, just enough to hobble about for a bit.
My father is involved in a court case and has had to swear a legal oath about a hermit. This is very much the sort of thing which might have happened in the eleventh century, and got recorded in passing in one of the charters I work on. My dad was friends with the hermit through their mutual love of trees, but whereas my father somehow lives in the world, the hermit had retired to a hut in the woods somewhere and made an amazing garden or arboretum. Now the hermit's dead my father is involved in trying to save the garden, which means proving how long it had been under cultivation. My father is able to provide evidence about this through his records of the plants he had donated for the purpose, and the oath was specifically about the rosa cymosa named after me, which apparently flourishes there, somewhere hidden in the north of Cornwall.
In other news, apparently if you want a cigarette you should ask someone in their right ear. Also from boingboing, a leech-powered barometer. And I have broken my toe, but not badly, just enough to hobble about for a bit.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Audio-visual
Also good: DVDs. I have joined one of those rental things. I did this once before but had to stop because it was while I was teaching and I had no spare time. (I find that I rather miss teaching, though it's a perverse time of year to think that.)
1. Raffles! I used to love these books as a teenager. Raffles is a gentleman thief; he steals things in order to keep playing cricket for England. His sidekick is Bunny, a round-faced young man who was his fag at school. They wear evening dress with capes, and rob country houses while wearing white gloves and top hats. I recommend these highly; for one thing they're from the era before jerky distracting camera work, and for another Anthony Valentine is oddly compelling in the lead role. I can't find a DVD of Dr Syn (or was it Dr Sin?), the smuggling clergyman of Romney Marsh, although I know there was a TV adaptation of that too.
2. Pulling. The first series was a bit meh. The second series and the final special are very funny.
3. The Larry Sandars show. Excellent stuff.
4. My So-called Life; disappointing so far. Maybe because it's very hard to feel any sympathy for the Claire Danes character, who keeps saying tasteless things about envying Anne Frank.
5. Firefly. I thought I ought to watch this if only to get the in-jokes in xkcd and google demonstrations. (If you watch this google wave demonstration there is a bit where it talks about real-time collaboration which I guarantee will make you shudder and feel ill with the sheer possibilities for endless endless talking.) Also I went to see the film Serenity in the cinema with a friend who was expecting it to be an intellectual anti-war polemic because he'd heard it mentioned on Radio 4; I don't think he was terribly impressed but I thought it was great. Anyway, it's really excellent, like a sort of Western (with horses and shoot-outs and everything) set in the defeated American South but in space! I can't believe they cancelled it after one season.
1. Raffles! I used to love these books as a teenager. Raffles is a gentleman thief; he steals things in order to keep playing cricket for England. His sidekick is Bunny, a round-faced young man who was his fag at school. They wear evening dress with capes, and rob country houses while wearing white gloves and top hats. I recommend these highly; for one thing they're from the era before jerky distracting camera work, and for another Anthony Valentine is oddly compelling in the lead role. I can't find a DVD of Dr Syn (or was it Dr Sin?), the smuggling clergyman of Romney Marsh, although I know there was a TV adaptation of that too.
2. Pulling. The first series was a bit meh. The second series and the final special are very funny.
3. The Larry Sandars show. Excellent stuff.
4. My So-called Life; disappointing so far. Maybe because it's very hard to feel any sympathy for the Claire Danes character, who keeps saying tasteless things about envying Anne Frank.
5. Firefly. I thought I ought to watch this if only to get the in-jokes in xkcd and google demonstrations. (If you watch this google wave demonstration there is a bit where it talks about real-time collaboration which I guarantee will make you shudder and feel ill with the sheer possibilities for endless endless talking.) Also I went to see the film Serenity in the cinema with a friend who was expecting it to be an intellectual anti-war polemic because he'd heard it mentioned on Radio 4; I don't think he was terribly impressed but I thought it was great. Anyway, it's really excellent, like a sort of Western (with horses and shoot-outs and everything) set in the defeated American South but in space! I can't believe they cancelled it after one season.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Paperbacks
Hurray for paperbacks! If you don't think you're ever going to reread them you just give them to Oxfam. I've been rereading lots of Iain Pears' excellent art-history crime books, and also some Perez-Reverte. The latter is part of my quest to find a book written after 1914 which my boss would like. The Fencing Master might do, but I think The Dumas Club has the wrong sort of sex in it, which is a shame, because he's a big fan of Dumas.
In new books, I enjoyed Me Cheeta. When it came out in hardback it was anonymous, or at least purporting to be by Cheeta, but now it has someone's name attached. Well done James Lever! It's very funny and mimics the bitchy Hollywood tone perfectly. Also Cheeta's love for Tarzan (Tony Weissmuller) is very touching, and it has an amusing index, which is quite a hard thing to pull off. It's probably the sort of book that would make a good present. But not for anyone who doesn't like the idea of chimpanzees snorting cocaine from the breasts of nubile starlets. So probably not my mum.
Tibor Fischer's Good to be God is also good, but he's yet another one of those authors whose work I read, and enjoy, but put down thinking how much better their earlier stuff was. I love The Thought Gang and The Collector Collector (and I know that not loving Under the Frog so much is a sign of my unintellectual nature).
I read The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta. All the characters were very 2-D, verging on stereotypes, and I found it hard to get worked up about it. It has gone straight on the Oxfam pile.
I read Alan Moore's Watchmen. I enjoyed it. But it's interesting that even though comics don't have to be geeky, they are. Also naive -- why on earth would an alien landing in New York pull the whole world together in harmony during the Cold War? The same political antagonisms would continue. Isn't that how the Romans conquered Gall? Anyway, now I too am a geek, arguing about the logical inconsistencies in comic books.
Eamon Duffy's one-volume history of the papacy is good. I have the Oxford Dictionary of Popes, but I've never really read it all the way through rather than just dipping in to work out which of the (generally nauseating) popes of the tenth and eleventh centuries were involved in various things I'm working on. Now I want to read a biography of Marozia. Maybe I should write one. I could put it together with some other short lives in a collection called "Genuinely Revolting Women". I hate this feminist thing where you have to be on the side of all women ever and you can never disapprove of anything they did -- it's very patronising. Marozia's story would all be a bit too schlocky for a novel; my advice is that if you ever come across a novel based on the life of Marozia, avoid it. I read a novel once about the life of that Spanish woman who was Lucrezia di Borgia's sister-in-law, and that was a mistake. Also, novels about anyone with the surname Boleyn.
And I finished the Arcadia book. It was interesting but irritating. For one thing when he transcribed original documents there were tons of instances of words like "pishe" which were quite clearly meant to be "parishe", and he's just failed to notice the tag on the back of the p which shows it's short for par or per. This really annoyed me.
In new books, I enjoyed Me Cheeta. When it came out in hardback it was anonymous, or at least purporting to be by Cheeta, but now it has someone's name attached. Well done James Lever! It's very funny and mimics the bitchy Hollywood tone perfectly. Also Cheeta's love for Tarzan (Tony Weissmuller) is very touching, and it has an amusing index, which is quite a hard thing to pull off. It's probably the sort of book that would make a good present. But not for anyone who doesn't like the idea of chimpanzees snorting cocaine from the breasts of nubile starlets. So probably not my mum.
Tibor Fischer's Good to be God is also good, but he's yet another one of those authors whose work I read, and enjoy, but put down thinking how much better their earlier stuff was. I love The Thought Gang and The Collector Collector (and I know that not loving Under the Frog so much is a sign of my unintellectual nature).
I read The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta. All the characters were very 2-D, verging on stereotypes, and I found it hard to get worked up about it. It has gone straight on the Oxfam pile.
I read Alan Moore's Watchmen. I enjoyed it. But it's interesting that even though comics don't have to be geeky, they are. Also naive -- why on earth would an alien landing in New York pull the whole world together in harmony during the Cold War? The same political antagonisms would continue. Isn't that how the Romans conquered Gall? Anyway, now I too am a geek, arguing about the logical inconsistencies in comic books.
Eamon Duffy's one-volume history of the papacy is good. I have the Oxford Dictionary of Popes, but I've never really read it all the way through rather than just dipping in to work out which of the (generally nauseating) popes of the tenth and eleventh centuries were involved in various things I'm working on. Now I want to read a biography of Marozia. Maybe I should write one. I could put it together with some other short lives in a collection called "Genuinely Revolting Women". I hate this feminist thing where you have to be on the side of all women ever and you can never disapprove of anything they did -- it's very patronising. Marozia's story would all be a bit too schlocky for a novel; my advice is that if you ever come across a novel based on the life of Marozia, avoid it. I read a novel once about the life of that Spanish woman who was Lucrezia di Borgia's sister-in-law, and that was a mistake. Also, novels about anyone with the surname Boleyn.
And I finished the Arcadia book. It was interesting but irritating. For one thing when he transcribed original documents there were tons of instances of words like "pishe" which were quite clearly meant to be "parishe", and he's just failed to notice the tag on the back of the p which shows it's short for par or per. This really annoyed me.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Democracy
Voting the other day was surprisingly quick. Usually there's at least a bit of a queue, but I put Do You Wanna Funk? on my ipod as I left the house, and it was just finishing as I let myself back in later. Good voting music:
I was amazed at the number of parties up for the European elections. There were loads along the lines of Libertas and UKIP. I assume they badly split the grumpy anti-Europe vote. I was impressed by the name choice of the Jury Team, who were presumably disappointed that Justice Squad is already taken; they were one of the few not to have bombarded me with leaflets covered with WWII iconography, so I don't know what they actually stand for, but I'm guessing it's an increase in costumed vigilantes. My favourite leaflet started "British MPs are badly failing the UK's animals!" which I thought was pleasantly unpredictable. That was for the Animals Count party, for which I would have voted if I had been going to choose a non-serious party. As it was I went for the Lib Dems. They're great at local politics, and put stuff through my door about tree-planting schemes and such all year round, plus although I don't care greatly about MPs' expenses I do like the fact that the Cambridge Lib Dem MP has claimed zero pounds of second-home expenses in the last three years, and just commutes to London, like a normal person. Plus the list of Lib Dem candidates for Europe included both women and people who sounded a bit foreign. Go Lib Dems!
The sad truth is that even though I'm an adult and supposed to know by now I really don't quite understand what European MPs do, let alone have an answer to the question of Europe. I envy people who have opinions on big issues at the drop of a hat, although obviously I also think slightly less of them. There are tons of really important things on which I don't yet have a proper opinion, like abortion, though I do know that I could never in a million years vote for someone who would reduce the legal ability of women to make their own minds up about this. Long may it remain not an electoral issue in the UK!
I was amazed at the number of parties up for the European elections. There were loads along the lines of Libertas and UKIP. I assume they badly split the grumpy anti-Europe vote. I was impressed by the name choice of the Jury Team, who were presumably disappointed that Justice Squad is already taken; they were one of the few not to have bombarded me with leaflets covered with WWII iconography, so I don't know what they actually stand for, but I'm guessing it's an increase in costumed vigilantes. My favourite leaflet started "British MPs are badly failing the UK's animals!" which I thought was pleasantly unpredictable. That was for the Animals Count party, for which I would have voted if I had been going to choose a non-serious party. As it was I went for the Lib Dems. They're great at local politics, and put stuff through my door about tree-planting schemes and such all year round, plus although I don't care greatly about MPs' expenses I do like the fact that the Cambridge Lib Dem MP has claimed zero pounds of second-home expenses in the last three years, and just commutes to London, like a normal person. Plus the list of Lib Dem candidates for Europe included both women and people who sounded a bit foreign. Go Lib Dems!
The sad truth is that even though I'm an adult and supposed to know by now I really don't quite understand what European MPs do, let alone have an answer to the question of Europe. I envy people who have opinions on big issues at the drop of a hat, although obviously I also think slightly less of them. There are tons of really important things on which I don't yet have a proper opinion, like abortion, though I do know that I could never in a million years vote for someone who would reduce the legal ability of women to make their own minds up about this. Long may it remain not an electoral issue in the UK!
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Sad things
1. My dad's pheasant chicks were killed by a cat. He sounded very sad about it. He's been trying to breed from them for ages and finally they hatched two cute little chicks, and the previously tame male pheasant went aggressive in a touching sort of way. There are too many cats where they live; since another four moved in next door the effect on birds has been noticeable. Some dogs are bird dogs, like setters and spaniels, while some are mammal dogs, like terriers and hounds. Our dog Elly would go crazy for birds, which she hardly ever caught, but confronted with my pet rats would just look at me doubtfully as if to say "you do know you have rats on you?" Some cats prefer mammals, but I don't know how you tell in advance. There are ridiculously vast numbers of rabbits and no small number of rats around my parents' village, but the cats just go for the finches.
2. A festschrift has recently come out for an Anglo-Saxon legal historian who died, only in his 50s, a few years ago. It is oddly candid; I've never before seen a festschrift which includes a memoir of life with the deceased festee written by his estranged ex-wife. This particular man was an example of how academia can go wrong. He got an All Souls prize fellowship straight out of his undergraduate degree, and never finished his PhD; he didn't manage to produce anything of book length until a few years before his death, although he did write some very good articles. But he could never get over being terribly clever at Eton, and then terribly clever at Balliol. He wanted to be clearly acknowledged as the cleverest all the time and the more he succeeded the more he felt he had to achieve not to fail, and the more it was impossible for anyone to praise him enough. There was a surprising amount of generosity towards him in academic circles; I suppose he was enough of a mess to arouse more pity than anything in most people, and perhaps it was also because his alcoholism led him to behave so very badly that it was clear he was seriously ill. I disliked him and feared him, myself: I didn't realise at the time why he was so unpleasant to me on the rare occasions when he was forced to notice my existence. Apparently he was convinced that there were conspiracies against him, the major one emanating from Cambridge, and specifically from my DoS/ex boss, who was I hope unaware of this, being a genuinely nice person. He would have seen anything I achieved as reflecting well on this particular teacher, and in that way damaging to himself. I'm not sure that understanding makes it OK though; I used to dread occasions where I knew he'd be present. I remember vividly my relief when he didn't turn up to the charters symposium in September 2004, which turned to mild feelings of guilt when I found out that he wasn't there because he had been engaged in his fatal alcoholic binge. Still, reading the festschrift it did strike me hard what a terrible waste the whole thing was. Saddest of all was the description of how, even as he was being consumed by this stupid insecurity, he was trying to cope with the same condition in his famously horrible Peterhouse father, by dedicating his work to him and frequently talking of his debt to him in print. Bubble egos, huge but hollow, are sadly common in academic circles.
3. I read a guardian article about how more and more divorces are said to involve some sort of digital infidelity. (Complete non-news, obviously -- it's like a story saying more people are using the internet than ten years ago.) It had some links to websites which help people arrange affairs, and perhaps foolishly (especially given that I was on my work computer at the time) I clicked through. The site had a big banner at the top offering to introduce me to lonely and unsatisfied housewives in the Cambridge area. I was a little freaked out that it immediately knew I was in Cambridge, but also annoyed that it assumed that I was a man, a predatory unwilling-to-travel man who he is sure he can satisfy housewives. If I had been a lonely and unsatisfied housewife looking for a site to use I'm sure that description would have felt like an unflattering mirror and put me off, and assuming that they have more male than female users anyway it seems short-sighted of them to do this. Of course another possibility, given that my work IP address is shared with the whole college (for wikipedia purposes, at least), is that someone from college had been using the site and told them he was a man in the Cambridge area. Anyway, I had this sudden protective urge to find out who these lonely and unsatisfied housewives were, collect them into some large feminist group, and turn their minds to other means of expression and fulfilment. I'm not 100% sure what that would have been, but I guess it would have involved sneaking around the city at night leaving clay figurines like those of Gormley's Field for the British Isles in unlikely places.
4. Let's all cheer up now!
2. A festschrift has recently come out for an Anglo-Saxon legal historian who died, only in his 50s, a few years ago. It is oddly candid; I've never before seen a festschrift which includes a memoir of life with the deceased festee written by his estranged ex-wife. This particular man was an example of how academia can go wrong. He got an All Souls prize fellowship straight out of his undergraduate degree, and never finished his PhD; he didn't manage to produce anything of book length until a few years before his death, although he did write some very good articles. But he could never get over being terribly clever at Eton, and then terribly clever at Balliol. He wanted to be clearly acknowledged as the cleverest all the time and the more he succeeded the more he felt he had to achieve not to fail, and the more it was impossible for anyone to praise him enough. There was a surprising amount of generosity towards him in academic circles; I suppose he was enough of a mess to arouse more pity than anything in most people, and perhaps it was also because his alcoholism led him to behave so very badly that it was clear he was seriously ill. I disliked him and feared him, myself: I didn't realise at the time why he was so unpleasant to me on the rare occasions when he was forced to notice my existence. Apparently he was convinced that there were conspiracies against him, the major one emanating from Cambridge, and specifically from my DoS/ex boss, who was I hope unaware of this, being a genuinely nice person. He would have seen anything I achieved as reflecting well on this particular teacher, and in that way damaging to himself. I'm not sure that understanding makes it OK though; I used to dread occasions where I knew he'd be present. I remember vividly my relief when he didn't turn up to the charters symposium in September 2004, which turned to mild feelings of guilt when I found out that he wasn't there because he had been engaged in his fatal alcoholic binge. Still, reading the festschrift it did strike me hard what a terrible waste the whole thing was. Saddest of all was the description of how, even as he was being consumed by this stupid insecurity, he was trying to cope with the same condition in his famously horrible Peterhouse father, by dedicating his work to him and frequently talking of his debt to him in print. Bubble egos, huge but hollow, are sadly common in academic circles.
3. I read a guardian article about how more and more divorces are said to involve some sort of digital infidelity. (Complete non-news, obviously -- it's like a story saying more people are using the internet than ten years ago.) It had some links to websites which help people arrange affairs, and perhaps foolishly (especially given that I was on my work computer at the time) I clicked through. The site had a big banner at the top offering to introduce me to lonely and unsatisfied housewives in the Cambridge area. I was a little freaked out that it immediately knew I was in Cambridge, but also annoyed that it assumed that I was a man, a predatory unwilling-to-travel man who he is sure he can satisfy housewives. If I had been a lonely and unsatisfied housewife looking for a site to use I'm sure that description would have felt like an unflattering mirror and put me off, and assuming that they have more male than female users anyway it seems short-sighted of them to do this. Of course another possibility, given that my work IP address is shared with the whole college (for wikipedia purposes, at least), is that someone from college had been using the site and told them he was a man in the Cambridge area. Anyway, I had this sudden protective urge to find out who these lonely and unsatisfied housewives were, collect them into some large feminist group, and turn their minds to other means of expression and fulfilment. I'm not 100% sure what that would have been, but I guess it would have involved sneaking around the city at night leaving clay figurines like those of Gormley's Field for the British Isles in unlikely places.
4. Let's all cheer up now!
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Books and stuff
I read lots of books on my trip to the US but I've forgotten what a lot of them were. I gave two to Fiona and left five at the guest house. I think the two I gave to Fiona were Mavis Cheek, Amenable Women, and Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town. I found them both good but a tad disappointing because both of them have produced things I've really enjoyed in the past, specifically Mavis Cheek's Janice Gentle Gets Sexy and Patrick McGrath's Asylum. I also read Mark Morris's A Great and Terrible King, about Edward I, which was quite good. Also Slouching towards Kalamazoo, by Peter de Vries, which is quite funny. It's about a youth who's failing eighth grade and then gets his teacher pregnant. I can't remember the others though.
I read James Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent last night. I stayed up late to finish it. It was very good but I really should have gone to sleep because I think there was stuff going on which I was missing. There was an absolutely fantastic bit where a man's talking about a novel he wrote some decades before; it made me think of the amazing stuff about the Siberian death camp in The People's Act of Love.
The Siege by Ismail Kadare is also great, and quite monumental.
I resisted book buying at Kalamazoo because it's easy to get carried away and I need to live more lightly. But I did buy an excellent book which I hadn't heard of before, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal, by Gabrielle Langdon. I went to the Uffizi for the first time as an adult a couple of years ago and decided that Bronzino is my favourite painter because of those fantastic Medici portraits. Their self-sufficient beauty is slightly frightening: the children are really beautiful but you're glad not to have been in the same class as them at primary school. Also, you're afraid to ask what happened to them, especially Bia de Medici. And in fact it turns out that by the time it was painted she was already dead, and Bronzino probably got her features from her death mask. The same face is on the monster "fraude" in the Bronzino allegory in the National Gallery.
In the same book I liked the description of Giovanni de Medici as "considered papabile from infancy".
I also read Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. It's extremely good, and it's a bit annoying that it's only the first volume of a trilogy of which the rest are as yet unwritten. I read Christopher Brookmyre's Snowball in Hell. A wierd thing about Christopher Brookmyre, Ricky Gervais, and those people who do South Park, is that I enjoy their output even though it is clear from it that they are arseholes. Also, even though his rants about manufactured pop are put in the voice of one of his characters and shouldn't necessarily be seen as his own views, etc, it's still a little dangerous for someone to go on about this whose entire career is based around the book equivalent of manufactured pop: enjoyable, disposable, and with a consistency of output which is as much a professional strength as a failing.
I've started a book called Arcadia by Adam Nicolson about the early Earls of Pembroke at Wilton. They took over most of the lands of Wilton Abbey, and since I'm writing this bloody book about the land-holdings of Wilton I thought I'd read about the later stuff. The problem is first that he writes in quite a stylised way; but more seriously that he gives a little potted history of Wilton Abbey which seems to be entirely based on his misreadings of the fifteenth-century legendary material about it. He says that Alfred the Great laid the foundation stone; and that Edith of Wilton was rebuked for her fine clothes by Bishop Adelwold of Lindisfarne. It was actually Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, her contemporary and an important political figure, rather than a hermit who lived on the other side of England and died more than two centuries earlier. He's obviously come across the spelling with a d rather than a th and ended up with the misidentification because the d spelling is more common in northern material -- in the medieval legends they're all pretty clear it's the Winchester one, so he hasn't got it from that. The anachronism could have rung alarm bells, since Edith is a pretty well-documented character, the much-loved oldest child of Edgar the Peacemaker, and her Life was written only about a century after she lived. (She held her own with Bishop Æthelwold, by the way, saying that since God sees the inner person she could be just as holy in rich clothes as in sackcloth and ashes, and the redoubtable Æthelwold was silenced; she's a pretty endearing saint, and even had her own zoo.) He's also pretty uncritical in his repetition of all that "naughty nun" stuff so beloved of the Reformation era. So I've had to pause in the reading to consider the question of whether cavalier inaccuracies like that cast doubt on the rest of his work, or whether it's a different thing to write about social trends between the Reformation and the Civil War. But really, when you read things by later historians which touch on Anglo-Saxon stuff you sometimes end up wondering whether later history even involves source criticism, or whether they just read narrative sources all the time. This particular author's attitude seems like it might be all about building something nice; I can't explain quite what I mean, but people with theories, or doing Theory, often seem a bit like scrapbookers, who can cleverly assemble existing stuff into something nice and clever, which might have its own intrinsic value, and perhaps win the Turner prize, but isn't much to do with what they started with; it's actually all a game to do with human intelligence, and really more about anthropology than anything else.
I read James Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent last night. I stayed up late to finish it. It was very good but I really should have gone to sleep because I think there was stuff going on which I was missing. There was an absolutely fantastic bit where a man's talking about a novel he wrote some decades before; it made me think of the amazing stuff about the Siberian death camp in The People's Act of Love.
The Siege by Ismail Kadare is also great, and quite monumental.
I resisted book buying at Kalamazoo because it's easy to get carried away and I need to live more lightly. But I did buy an excellent book which I hadn't heard of before, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal, by Gabrielle Langdon. I went to the Uffizi for the first time as an adult a couple of years ago and decided that Bronzino is my favourite painter because of those fantastic Medici portraits. Their self-sufficient beauty is slightly frightening: the children are really beautiful but you're glad not to have been in the same class as them at primary school. Also, you're afraid to ask what happened to them, especially Bia de Medici. And in fact it turns out that by the time it was painted she was already dead, and Bronzino probably got her features from her death mask. The same face is on the monster "fraude" in the Bronzino allegory in the National Gallery.In the same book I liked the description of Giovanni de Medici as "considered papabile from infancy".
I also read Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. It's extremely good, and it's a bit annoying that it's only the first volume of a trilogy of which the rest are as yet unwritten. I read Christopher Brookmyre's Snowball in Hell. A wierd thing about Christopher Brookmyre, Ricky Gervais, and those people who do South Park, is that I enjoy their output even though it is clear from it that they are arseholes. Also, even though his rants about manufactured pop are put in the voice of one of his characters and shouldn't necessarily be seen as his own views, etc, it's still a little dangerous for someone to go on about this whose entire career is based around the book equivalent of manufactured pop: enjoyable, disposable, and with a consistency of output which is as much a professional strength as a failing.
I've started a book called Arcadia by Adam Nicolson about the early Earls of Pembroke at Wilton. They took over most of the lands of Wilton Abbey, and since I'm writing this bloody book about the land-holdings of Wilton I thought I'd read about the later stuff. The problem is first that he writes in quite a stylised way; but more seriously that he gives a little potted history of Wilton Abbey which seems to be entirely based on his misreadings of the fifteenth-century legendary material about it. He says that Alfred the Great laid the foundation stone; and that Edith of Wilton was rebuked for her fine clothes by Bishop Adelwold of Lindisfarne. It was actually Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, her contemporary and an important political figure, rather than a hermit who lived on the other side of England and died more than two centuries earlier. He's obviously come across the spelling with a d rather than a th and ended up with the misidentification because the d spelling is more common in northern material -- in the medieval legends they're all pretty clear it's the Winchester one, so he hasn't got it from that. The anachronism could have rung alarm bells, since Edith is a pretty well-documented character, the much-loved oldest child of Edgar the Peacemaker, and her Life was written only about a century after she lived. (She held her own with Bishop Æthelwold, by the way, saying that since God sees the inner person she could be just as holy in rich clothes as in sackcloth and ashes, and the redoubtable Æthelwold was silenced; she's a pretty endearing saint, and even had her own zoo.) He's also pretty uncritical in his repetition of all that "naughty nun" stuff so beloved of the Reformation era. So I've had to pause in the reading to consider the question of whether cavalier inaccuracies like that cast doubt on the rest of his work, or whether it's a different thing to write about social trends between the Reformation and the Civil War. But really, when you read things by later historians which touch on Anglo-Saxon stuff you sometimes end up wondering whether later history even involves source criticism, or whether they just read narrative sources all the time. This particular author's attitude seems like it might be all about building something nice; I can't explain quite what I mean, but people with theories, or doing Theory, often seem a bit like scrapbookers, who can cleverly assemble existing stuff into something nice and clever, which might have its own intrinsic value, and perhaps win the Turner prize, but isn't much to do with what they started with; it's actually all a game to do with human intelligence, and really more about anthropology than anything else.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Odd little things
1. I've been toying with the idea of online backup, though I probably won't buy any in the end. The one I'm looking at right now offers storage locations with bullet-proof walls, and NSA-approved encryption. Why would I want NSA-approved encryption? Doesn't that mean encryption it won't cost them too much money to break if they decide it's worth monitoring me for anti-American activities?
2. I have mixed feelings about good music being available for free. The new Dragonette song can be got here and the Kleerup song here. Both are excellent. But shouldn't I have to pay for this sort of thing? Here's Sophie Ellis Bextor and the Freemasons, not free.
3. I don't quite get the hugeness of the MPs expenses scandal. It does make them all look like childish prats, but I'm bored of it now, even though I was away for most of it. Are the journalists really shocked, or are they just chuffed to have caught some people out? Journalists are a pretty unattractive bunch of characters. Now I'm getting tons of UKIP and BNP stuff through my letterbox, as if a suspicion that all mainstream politicians are on the make will send me, with relief, to people who are just going to pour all their energies into making life unpleasant for foreigners and those who look a bit foreign. The BNP promises, with lots of WWII imagery, to protect our British soldiers from insult by Muslims on our streets. I'm very sorry that anyone's insulting anyone on our streets. Also these putative BNP electees will give ten percent of their putative salaries to a fund to pay for people to celebrate St George's day. I could help them with suggestions for what St George's day celebrations might entail -- I'd vote for lots of fantastic Middle Eastern street food in honour of his origins, probably Greek or Palestinian. Falafel in pitta breads, and slow-roasted lamb on mounds of yellow rice. It would be a nice occasion to share with people from other places where he's the patron saint -- I know Palestine is one of them, and wikipedia has just told me that Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece and lots of Spanish places also have him as a patron. The Eastern Orthodox, for whom St George is very important, hold that icons of him fighting the dragon represent the spiritual struggle against the evil within; also it's often held that the dragon in the story was actually the emblem of a particular legion in which George was a soldier, and that the legend of the dragon fight grew up around his refusal to give in to the demands of normal legion life (specifically to sacrifice to the tutelary deities), so St George's day could be a day of protest against excess militarism. That would be nice. It's actually sounding like quite a fun day.
4. I just got the proofs for a note I'm publishing in a Belgian (French-speaking) journal. They have changed all my colons to semi-colons. I love colons. It's possible that I use them too much, but I think I use them correctly. Either I put them between two halves of a sentence which balance and oppose each other, like the fulcrum of a seesaw, or I put them after an introductory phrase which is followed by three related examples or explanations, separated by semi-colons (of which ideally the third is the longest). I hate the look of semi-colons in their place. I suppose it's a French language thing, like little double angle brackets for quotation marks, but it seems a shame to me.
5. This Guardian story must have caused some blushes at the Guardian and elsewhere. Well done journalists. I think this is at least as shocking as getting the public purse to pay to have your moat cleaned -- given that the allowance is for maintaining a second home then at least you haven't done anything against the letter of the rules, even if you do look like an idiot, whereas using unverified stuff you got off a notoriously unreliable website undermines the entire point of journalism. Maybe we shouldn't bother with newspapers at all any more, if we're all better off making our own intelligent judgements on the accuracy of the material which we find using a google search.
6. This looks very sub-early-Britney and sounds very post-Duffy. I suppose one should feel sorry for someone called Pixie, but she must be old enough to change it if she wants. But I do like the bit at the end where they all have some sort of girls vs boys pat-a-cake contest.
2. I have mixed feelings about good music being available for free. The new Dragonette song can be got here and the Kleerup song here. Both are excellent. But shouldn't I have to pay for this sort of thing? Here's Sophie Ellis Bextor and the Freemasons, not free.
3. I don't quite get the hugeness of the MPs expenses scandal. It does make them all look like childish prats, but I'm bored of it now, even though I was away for most of it. Are the journalists really shocked, or are they just chuffed to have caught some people out? Journalists are a pretty unattractive bunch of characters. Now I'm getting tons of UKIP and BNP stuff through my letterbox, as if a suspicion that all mainstream politicians are on the make will send me, with relief, to people who are just going to pour all their energies into making life unpleasant for foreigners and those who look a bit foreign. The BNP promises, with lots of WWII imagery, to protect our British soldiers from insult by Muslims on our streets. I'm very sorry that anyone's insulting anyone on our streets. Also these putative BNP electees will give ten percent of their putative salaries to a fund to pay for people to celebrate St George's day. I could help them with suggestions for what St George's day celebrations might entail -- I'd vote for lots of fantastic Middle Eastern street food in honour of his origins, probably Greek or Palestinian. Falafel in pitta breads, and slow-roasted lamb on mounds of yellow rice. It would be a nice occasion to share with people from other places where he's the patron saint -- I know Palestine is one of them, and wikipedia has just told me that Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece and lots of Spanish places also have him as a patron. The Eastern Orthodox, for whom St George is very important, hold that icons of him fighting the dragon represent the spiritual struggle against the evil within; also it's often held that the dragon in the story was actually the emblem of a particular legion in which George was a soldier, and that the legend of the dragon fight grew up around his refusal to give in to the demands of normal legion life (specifically to sacrifice to the tutelary deities), so St George's day could be a day of protest against excess militarism. That would be nice. It's actually sounding like quite a fun day.
4. I just got the proofs for a note I'm publishing in a Belgian (French-speaking) journal. They have changed all my colons to semi-colons. I love colons. It's possible that I use them too much, but I think I use them correctly. Either I put them between two halves of a sentence which balance and oppose each other, like the fulcrum of a seesaw, or I put them after an introductory phrase which is followed by three related examples or explanations, separated by semi-colons (of which ideally the third is the longest). I hate the look of semi-colons in their place. I suppose it's a French language thing, like little double angle brackets for quotation marks, but it seems a shame to me.
5. This Guardian story must have caused some blushes at the Guardian and elsewhere. Well done journalists. I think this is at least as shocking as getting the public purse to pay to have your moat cleaned -- given that the allowance is for maintaining a second home then at least you haven't done anything against the letter of the rules, even if you do look like an idiot, whereas using unverified stuff you got off a notoriously unreliable website undermines the entire point of journalism. Maybe we shouldn't bother with newspapers at all any more, if we're all better off making our own intelligent judgements on the accuracy of the material which we find using a google search.
6. This looks very sub-early-Britney and sounds very post-Duffy. I suppose one should feel sorry for someone called Pixie, but she must be old enough to change it if she wants. But I do like the bit at the end where they all have some sort of girls vs boys pat-a-cake contest.
Friday, 15 May 2009
The time in England is now
In New York I stayed at an excellent guest house called the Sutton Residence, run by a bloke called Bruce. I would recommend it; it wasn't cheap in terms of anywhere else in the world but New York is very expensive, so it was good value.
Quite late in the day a friend of mine decided to join me in New York because she had a few days of unexpected leave, which was great, because she's much better at doing interesting things than I am. If she hadn't been there I expect I would have spent almost all my time in museums. We rendezvoused on the viewing platform of 30Rock, 850 feet above street level, just to be a bit dramatic. Here's the view north, over Central Park.
Here's a list of all the things we did, more for my own future reference than because I think it's likely to make interesting reading:
1. We went to the Corner Bar in Greenwich Village, because a friend of mine's boyfriend said they have the best burgers in the world. The burgers were very good, but I'm not sure how far you can really take a burger.
2. We went on a three-hour boat trip all around the island. The commentator didn't really help with the general feeling of unreality by his refusal to distinguish between fact and fiction, and his invocation of imagination for both of them. One minute he'd be telling us just where the north tower used to stand, and how we had to picture them both there twice as high as any extant building, and then he'd be pointing out the tram-lines where Spiderman saved all those children in 2007; the Yankee stadium was famous for Babe Ruth doing something impressive in the 50s, but also as the workplace of George Costanza. Actually Fiona didn't have a problem with this, but I found it wierd.
3. We ate s'mores at a place where you toast your own marshmallows at the table. Mine kept catching fire.
4. We ate at Tomoe Sushi back in the West Village, which was very good and not too expensive, and very satisfying because we got the last free table and when we left there was a long queue down the street.
5. We went to two diners for breakfast, both of which were good. The Lexington Candy Shop, which isn't actually a candy shop, was very nice, but with a no refills policy. It's not far from the Met. The other one was the Comfort Diner, which was a bit less well-lit. Fiona tried grits and biscuits. They are not pleasant. The difference between us is that she wants to try things out, sometimes with bad results like the turnip juice in Istanbul, while I just asked for my eggs sunny-side-up (or British style as they also call it) with bacon, and politely refused the maple syrup.
6. We went to the Met. It's the sort of place where you see things and think "I didn't know that was here", like the Damien Hirst shark. There were some fantastic Fayyum mummy portraits:
and a wierd thing like a huge growth of metal roots on the fifth-floor terrace, overlooking Central Park.
7. Then we split up because I wanted to see the Cloisters and Fiona had been there before. Also I don't think she could quite see why I would go all the way across the Atlantic and then go and look at medieval bits and pieces given that I live in Europe. I have to admit she has a point; she lives in Rome, a stone's throw from the Pantheon, but even in Cambridge I don't really need to go out of my way to see Romanesque architecture. I found it a tad underwhelming of itself; the cool thing is being able to look out through medieval French arches down to the Hudson river. I suppose it's the equivalent of the old Getty in L.A., a replica of the Villa of the Papyri on a hill overlooking the Pacific. But the old Getty has some really amazing things in it. In the meantime Fiona crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and did something else interesting, I forget what.
8. Then we tried to go to a thing called the Secret Science Club (not that secret given that it was in Time Out). It was at 7th St and 2nd Ave, and we looked for it for ages before realising that it was 7th St in Brooklyn. Heigh ho. While looking we saw Alphabet City, which has shouting drunks in it, and which I preferred to the West Village. Instead we ate fondue at a place called the Bourgeois Pig, which was OK; they ID'd us which made Fiona happy, but made me think that they thought we were too scruffy. The place was lit like a brothel; I spent ages trying to find the lights in the loo before realising they were already on, which made me feel very old.
9. Then we went to an East Village comedy night run by Seth Herzog, called Sweet. His mother did the DJing but couldn't work the ipod, so introduced many of the acts by singing show tunes from her youth. There was also a bit where she told us how to get mildew off a shower curtain. It was quite funny. I can't remember the name of the people except for Ben Lerman, who sang songs about gay sex accompanying himself on a ukelele. Here's his blog entry about that night. He doesn't mention chatting to Fiona.
10. And we ate cheesecake at Katz's Diner ("Send a Salami to your Boy in the Army"). It was quite good.
11. Also I had a bagel at Ess-a-Bagel, which is in the finals of Best Bagel in New York. It was a tad disappointing because although it was good I have had better bagels in London. It's probably more a matter of getting them really fresh than anything.
12. We hired bikes and rode around Central Park. On the plus side it's such a huge place -- 850 acres, when the island is only 2 miles by 7 -- that a bicycle is handy, but on the other hand there's tons of places where you're not allowed to cycle. I would have preferred to wander around more relaxedly, I think. Plus it wasn't cheap.
13. We had some good pizza at Naples 45; it claimed to be authentic Neapolitan but really wasn't -- it was more in a crispy Roman style. It was ranked one of the top ten American pizzas by American heritage, which was again a bit disappointing. All in all the food in New York was mostly quite good, but over-hyped.
That's probably it for me and America. It's the third time I've been, each time paid for by some project or other, and I've seen San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Kalamazoo, and New York. I'm unlikely ever to choose to go there on holiday because of the jet lag. The places I really want to go are Israel/Palestine again, Istanbul again, and the shores of the Black Sea. Of course I've still got to go to Newfoundland later this summer, but that turns out to be only 3 and a half hours' time difference, which is a relief.
Quite late in the day a friend of mine decided to join me in New York because she had a few days of unexpected leave, which was great, because she's much better at doing interesting things than I am. If she hadn't been there I expect I would have spent almost all my time in museums. We rendezvoused on the viewing platform of 30Rock, 850 feet above street level, just to be a bit dramatic. Here's the view north, over Central Park.
Here's a list of all the things we did, more for my own future reference than because I think it's likely to make interesting reading:
1. We went to the Corner Bar in Greenwich Village, because a friend of mine's boyfriend said they have the best burgers in the world. The burgers were very good, but I'm not sure how far you can really take a burger.
2. We went on a three-hour boat trip all around the island. The commentator didn't really help with the general feeling of unreality by his refusal to distinguish between fact and fiction, and his invocation of imagination for both of them. One minute he'd be telling us just where the north tower used to stand, and how we had to picture them both there twice as high as any extant building, and then he'd be pointing out the tram-lines where Spiderman saved all those children in 2007; the Yankee stadium was famous for Babe Ruth doing something impressive in the 50s, but also as the workplace of George Costanza. Actually Fiona didn't have a problem with this, but I found it wierd.
3. We ate s'mores at a place where you toast your own marshmallows at the table. Mine kept catching fire.
4. We ate at Tomoe Sushi back in the West Village, which was very good and not too expensive, and very satisfying because we got the last free table and when we left there was a long queue down the street.
5. We went to two diners for breakfast, both of which were good. The Lexington Candy Shop, which isn't actually a candy shop, was very nice, but with a no refills policy. It's not far from the Met. The other one was the Comfort Diner, which was a bit less well-lit. Fiona tried grits and biscuits. They are not pleasant. The difference between us is that she wants to try things out, sometimes with bad results like the turnip juice in Istanbul, while I just asked for my eggs sunny-side-up (or British style as they also call it) with bacon, and politely refused the maple syrup.
6. We went to the Met. It's the sort of place where you see things and think "I didn't know that was here", like the Damien Hirst shark. There were some fantastic Fayyum mummy portraits:
and a wierd thing like a huge growth of metal roots on the fifth-floor terrace, overlooking Central Park.
7. Then we split up because I wanted to see the Cloisters and Fiona had been there before. Also I don't think she could quite see why I would go all the way across the Atlantic and then go and look at medieval bits and pieces given that I live in Europe. I have to admit she has a point; she lives in Rome, a stone's throw from the Pantheon, but even in Cambridge I don't really need to go out of my way to see Romanesque architecture. I found it a tad underwhelming of itself; the cool thing is being able to look out through medieval French arches down to the Hudson river. I suppose it's the equivalent of the old Getty in L.A., a replica of the Villa of the Papyri on a hill overlooking the Pacific. But the old Getty has some really amazing things in it. In the meantime Fiona crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and did something else interesting, I forget what.
8. Then we tried to go to a thing called the Secret Science Club (not that secret given that it was in Time Out). It was at 7th St and 2nd Ave, and we looked for it for ages before realising that it was 7th St in Brooklyn. Heigh ho. While looking we saw Alphabet City, which has shouting drunks in it, and which I preferred to the West Village. Instead we ate fondue at a place called the Bourgeois Pig, which was OK; they ID'd us which made Fiona happy, but made me think that they thought we were too scruffy. The place was lit like a brothel; I spent ages trying to find the lights in the loo before realising they were already on, which made me feel very old.
9. Then we went to an East Village comedy night run by Seth Herzog, called Sweet. His mother did the DJing but couldn't work the ipod, so introduced many of the acts by singing show tunes from her youth. There was also a bit where she told us how to get mildew off a shower curtain. It was quite funny. I can't remember the name of the people except for Ben Lerman, who sang songs about gay sex accompanying himself on a ukelele. Here's his blog entry about that night. He doesn't mention chatting to Fiona.
10. And we ate cheesecake at Katz's Diner ("Send a Salami to your Boy in the Army"). It was quite good.
11. Also I had a bagel at Ess-a-Bagel, which is in the finals of Best Bagel in New York. It was a tad disappointing because although it was good I have had better bagels in London. It's probably more a matter of getting them really fresh than anything.
12. We hired bikes and rode around Central Park. On the plus side it's such a huge place -- 850 acres, when the island is only 2 miles by 7 -- that a bicycle is handy, but on the other hand there's tons of places where you're not allowed to cycle. I would have preferred to wander around more relaxedly, I think. Plus it wasn't cheap.
13. We had some good pizza at Naples 45; it claimed to be authentic Neapolitan but really wasn't -- it was more in a crispy Roman style. It was ranked one of the top ten American pizzas by American heritage, which was again a bit disappointing. All in all the food in New York was mostly quite good, but over-hyped.
That's probably it for me and America. It's the third time I've been, each time paid for by some project or other, and I've seen San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Kalamazoo, and New York. I'm unlikely ever to choose to go there on holiday because of the jet lag. The places I really want to go are Israel/Palestine again, Istanbul again, and the shores of the Black Sea. Of course I've still got to go to Newfoundland later this summer, but that turns out to be only 3 and a half hours' time difference, which is a relief.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Being a part of it
I arrived in New York this evening and suddenly everything seems a lot better. My back is still hurting, but somehow it doesn't seem quite so bad now, even if I am still walking like Elvis probably did as he made that final trip to the bathroom.
The day started in a trying manner. I lent my laptop to my boss for his presentation, and carefully turned off my google mail notifications, but didn't realise that that didn't include chat, so in the middle of his talk a little bubble popped up from a friend asking how things were - was I in a session? It got a big laugh but I felt rather foolish. Then I had to abandon the laptop for the last of the six papers so I could hear an old friend down the hall, and when I got back it turned out that during the questions it had started playing my screensaver, random pictures from my hard drive, starting of course with Figaro the cat in the bidet. So I suppose I at least made my contribution to the mild conference humour. My own paper was OK, I think. I talked about the sorts of things you could get undergraduates thinking about with these materials -- things like "how do you edit an unfixed text", etc.
The flight from Kalamazoo to Chicago was packed with people who are Names. It occurred to me that if it crashed a large proportion of my acquaintance would always say of my death "she was in the same plane as X" and how annoying that would be, like the people in the same crash as the Big Bopper, who don't even get their death to themselves. I spent the entire waiting period and most of the flight talking to someone who stands out as eccentric even among medievalists, and is not viewed by everyone as harmless. I long ago devised a strategy with her where I just let myself go and outwierd her, feeling no shame about being both odd and passive-aggressively self-aggrandising -- consequently I quite enjoy her company, and she probably considers me a terrible pest. It was a bit wearing though.
I cheered up when we were flying over a little green figure on a small island, because it seemed pretty certain to be the statue of liberty. Manhattan was looking like a carefully-made replica. I took a taxi from the airport and the driver made me shut my eyes as we were coming over the bridge, and then open them when the whole city was visible, by this time night-lit and sparkly. He said that his friends made him do that when he first came to the city. (They also took him to a gay bar, apparently -- he didn't offer me that option.) It seems very silly to be here somehow, when it's so clearly a place from stories: as if you suddenly found yourself walking around Combray, or Barchester, or the Land of Lost Content. Also it all looks slightly smaller. The man who runs this guest house is very nice, in a camp way. He told me where to get good pizza, and I also picked up an amazing slice of cheesecake. It was creamy and fluffy at the same time, and tasted slightly of vanilla; it was utterly the best cheese cake I have ever tasted. If I lived here it would probably be the cheese cake which would kill me, even though after dark the streets are a little scary, with people shouting oddly, and someone dancing on one of the subway vents where the steam comes up.
The day started in a trying manner. I lent my laptop to my boss for his presentation, and carefully turned off my google mail notifications, but didn't realise that that didn't include chat, so in the middle of his talk a little bubble popped up from a friend asking how things were - was I in a session? It got a big laugh but I felt rather foolish. Then I had to abandon the laptop for the last of the six papers so I could hear an old friend down the hall, and when I got back it turned out that during the questions it had started playing my screensaver, random pictures from my hard drive, starting of course with Figaro the cat in the bidet. So I suppose I at least made my contribution to the mild conference humour. My own paper was OK, I think. I talked about the sorts of things you could get undergraduates thinking about with these materials -- things like "how do you edit an unfixed text", etc.
The flight from Kalamazoo to Chicago was packed with people who are Names. It occurred to me that if it crashed a large proportion of my acquaintance would always say of my death "she was in the same plane as X" and how annoying that would be, like the people in the same crash as the Big Bopper, who don't even get their death to themselves. I spent the entire waiting period and most of the flight talking to someone who stands out as eccentric even among medievalists, and is not viewed by everyone as harmless. I long ago devised a strategy with her where I just let myself go and outwierd her, feeling no shame about being both odd and passive-aggressively self-aggrandising -- consequently I quite enjoy her company, and she probably considers me a terrible pest. It was a bit wearing though.
I cheered up when we were flying over a little green figure on a small island, because it seemed pretty certain to be the statue of liberty. Manhattan was looking like a carefully-made replica. I took a taxi from the airport and the driver made me shut my eyes as we were coming over the bridge, and then open them when the whole city was visible, by this time night-lit and sparkly. He said that his friends made him do that when he first came to the city. (They also took him to a gay bar, apparently -- he didn't offer me that option.) It seems very silly to be here somehow, when it's so clearly a place from stories: as if you suddenly found yourself walking around Combray, or Barchester, or the Land of Lost Content. Also it all looks slightly smaller. The man who runs this guest house is very nice, in a camp way. He told me where to get good pizza, and I also picked up an amazing slice of cheesecake. It was creamy and fluffy at the same time, and tasted slightly of vanilla; it was utterly the best cheese cake I have ever tasted. If I lived here it would probably be the cheese cake which would kill me, even though after dark the streets are a little scary, with people shouting oddly, and someone dancing on one of the subway vents where the steam comes up.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Only five hours behind now
I've moved from Chicago, Indiana, to Kalamazoo, Michigan. The train was OK once it got going, though I've knackered my back humping my laptop everywhere. When I booked, many months ago, I discovered that an upgrade to business class was only seven dollars, and I decided that the project could afford this given that the train fare is a fraction of the cost of flights. For my upgrade I was expecting essentially a better seat. I hadn't taken into account the American attitude to these things: it became clear that the extra money was for a dedicated carriage attendant called Marlene, a startlingly energetic lady who told us on embarking that we were all going to have a lot of fun! She gave several of my fellow travellers nicknames. I didn't get one, though she did call over a co-worker and make me repeat various things I'd said -- she just couldn't get over the way I pronounced "turkey and swiss". She seemed like a nice person but I would have paid the seven dollars to be left in peace. Though it was still certainly much better than flying.
On arriving at the conference I immediately encountered a leaflet advertising "Ipodius: Livin' Latina Voce". They record Latin texts for download, including this CD of Latin versions of popular songs. The joke is that they sing Gaudeamus Igitur with Classical pronunciation rather than the medieval pronunciation it was written for! May God have mercy on our souls.
I'm staying in the dorms, because my boss is too, and since he's a semi-retired eminent professor of worldwide reputation and usually impeccable standards I didn't feel I could really demand a hotel. These rooms are famous for one thing: the shared bathrooms. Everyone has an embarrassing Kalamazoo bathroom story, usually involving a nun. They are shared between two rooms, with a door from each, and there is no way of locking the other door when you are in. So it's entirely a lottery whether someone walks in on you in the shower or on the toilet. This amazes me. The long thin layout of the room would easily allow little cubicle doors in front of the toilet and the shower, but no one has thought to do this. So far the only trace I have seen of the person in the adjoining room, nun or not, is a toothbrush in a glass, and I hope it will remain so.
My paper is at 8.30 on the Sunday morning, the night after the famous Kalamazoo disco, where people behave badly with their conference wives, and attractive postgraduates debase themselves with hairy professors. You can buy t-shirts here which say, in six different medieval languages, "What happens in Kalamazoo stays in Kalamazoo". So I'm not expecting a large audience, which I wouldn't normally mind, but given that we're supposed to be publicising the project it does add to the general "waste of my time" feeling.
I feel rather guilty about my consistent inability to enjoy this sort of thing. I'm never any good at conferences, and this is the uber-conference, a sort of conference black hole, with around 4000 participants and 50 to 60 sessions running concurrently throughout the week. It's clear that many people here, mostly Americans I suppose, thrive on wandering around bumping into old academic acquaintances; enjoy the medieval-related japes, like the Arthurian themed M&Ms (the once and future candy); love the huge variety of sessions on offer and earnestly debate whether by leaving the one on Feminine Gaze early they can make the last paper in the Queering Chretien session. People luxuriate in the several halls full of book stands from all the major and minor publishers, while I just walk around feeling increasing repulsion for the idea of adding to this vast morass of careful words. It's not that I don't like my old academic acquaintances, and it's not that I'm not genuinely interested in things medieval. It's just that there's far too much, and all so facile. It seems to me like a sort of conference version of facebook -- a generator of weak humour with all the disadvantages of social interaction, the effort and the awkwardness, without any actual content.
On arriving at the conference I immediately encountered a leaflet advertising "Ipodius: Livin' Latina Voce". They record Latin texts for download, including this CD of Latin versions of popular songs. The joke is that they sing Gaudeamus Igitur with Classical pronunciation rather than the medieval pronunciation it was written for! May God have mercy on our souls.
I'm staying in the dorms, because my boss is too, and since he's a semi-retired eminent professor of worldwide reputation and usually impeccable standards I didn't feel I could really demand a hotel. These rooms are famous for one thing: the shared bathrooms. Everyone has an embarrassing Kalamazoo bathroom story, usually involving a nun. They are shared between two rooms, with a door from each, and there is no way of locking the other door when you are in. So it's entirely a lottery whether someone walks in on you in the shower or on the toilet. This amazes me. The long thin layout of the room would easily allow little cubicle doors in front of the toilet and the shower, but no one has thought to do this. So far the only trace I have seen of the person in the adjoining room, nun or not, is a toothbrush in a glass, and I hope it will remain so.
My paper is at 8.30 on the Sunday morning, the night after the famous Kalamazoo disco, where people behave badly with their conference wives, and attractive postgraduates debase themselves with hairy professors. You can buy t-shirts here which say, in six different medieval languages, "What happens in Kalamazoo stays in Kalamazoo". So I'm not expecting a large audience, which I wouldn't normally mind, but given that we're supposed to be publicising the project it does add to the general "waste of my time" feeling.
I feel rather guilty about my consistent inability to enjoy this sort of thing. I'm never any good at conferences, and this is the uber-conference, a sort of conference black hole, with around 4000 participants and 50 to 60 sessions running concurrently throughout the week. It's clear that many people here, mostly Americans I suppose, thrive on wandering around bumping into old academic acquaintances; enjoy the medieval-related japes, like the Arthurian themed M&Ms (the once and future candy); love the huge variety of sessions on offer and earnestly debate whether by leaving the one on Feminine Gaze early they can make the last paper in the Queering Chretien session. People luxuriate in the several halls full of book stands from all the major and minor publishers, while I just walk around feeling increasing repulsion for the idea of adding to this vast morass of careful words. It's not that I don't like my old academic acquaintances, and it's not that I'm not genuinely interested in things medieval. It's just that there's far too much, and all so facile. It seems to me like a sort of conference version of facebook -- a generator of weak humour with all the disadvantages of social interaction, the effort and the awkwardness, without any actual content.
Friday, 8 May 2009
Six hours behind
1. The best thing about America is the amiable way in which it is familiar and strange at the same time. I suppose that's true of most foreign countries, but particularly America. It's familiar because quite similar to England, and also because it's constantly on TV. Driving into Chicago the whole cityscape with its odd geometric shapes was glistening in the sunset with an oddly large moon above. I wish I could have got a picture but you can't really from the back of a taxi. (The picture here is from the last time I went to Kalamazoo, when I also stopped at Chicago. The wheel is a half-sized replica of the famous one from the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, as featured in Against the Day.)
Contrarily America feels strange because the similiarities are constantly undercut by random little differences, and also no one understands a word I'm saying even though we theoretically speak the same language. (I'd forgotten that this happened last time I was in Chicago too; it's wierd because I don't think of myself as having a hugely different accent from the people here.) I realised last night that my toothpaste tasted strange because it expired in March 2008, so next I get to go to a drugstore, which is an excellently typical American thing.
2. The worst thing about America is the time difference. I wouldn't really mind being here if it weren't for that, but I have had so much trouble with insomnia over the last year, and I always have a lot of trouble getting over jetlag. I feel quite sick right now, and that's only from the easier westward journey.
I forgot to smuggle any milk powder through US customs, so this morning I was at the mercy of non-dairy creamer. ("Contains Milk", apparently, which I thought was a non-dairy fail, but I suppose it could be goat's milk. Other contents: dipotassium phosphate, sodium aluminosilicate, sodium tripolyphosophate, etc etc.) But what I had forgotten is that Americans drink their coffee very mild and thin, so milk isn't necessary. Hurray!
3. The flight was delayed, but otherwise OK. I watched: Hotel for Dogs, which made me cry because I cry easily over dogs; Easy Virtue, which had just the right ending -- quite British rather than Hollywood; and Anchorman: the Ron Burgundy story, which I enjoyed much more than I was expecting, especially the bits with Baxter the dog. There were upsetting dog moments in all three, actually.
4. Also: hurray for proper Chicago pizza pie!
Contrarily America feels strange because the similiarities are constantly undercut by random little differences, and also no one understands a word I'm saying even though we theoretically speak the same language. (I'd forgotten that this happened last time I was in Chicago too; it's wierd because I don't think of myself as having a hugely different accent from the people here.) I realised last night that my toothpaste tasted strange because it expired in March 2008, so next I get to go to a drugstore, which is an excellently typical American thing.
2. The worst thing about America is the time difference. I wouldn't really mind being here if it weren't for that, but I have had so much trouble with insomnia over the last year, and I always have a lot of trouble getting over jetlag. I feel quite sick right now, and that's only from the easier westward journey.
I forgot to smuggle any milk powder through US customs, so this morning I was at the mercy of non-dairy creamer. ("Contains Milk", apparently, which I thought was a non-dairy fail, but I suppose it could be goat's milk. Other contents: dipotassium phosphate, sodium aluminosilicate, sodium tripolyphosophate, etc etc.) But what I had forgotten is that Americans drink their coffee very mild and thin, so milk isn't necessary. Hurray!
3. The flight was delayed, but otherwise OK. I watched: Hotel for Dogs, which made me cry because I cry easily over dogs; Easy Virtue, which had just the right ending -- quite British rather than Hollywood; and Anchorman: the Ron Burgundy story, which I enjoyed much more than I was expecting, especially the bits with Baxter the dog. There were upsetting dog moments in all three, actually.
4. Also: hurray for proper Chicago pizza pie!
Monday, 4 May 2009
Slouching towards Kalamazoo
I have been given two good pieces of advice about my unwilling trip to Kalamazoo next week. First, to take plenty of work to get on with, so that I don't feel guilty about skipping sessions (and to spend plenty of time skipping sessions). Secondly, not to look at the thing as an academic conference; it's actually a big medieval-themed trade fair. It's true that when I went before I got some really nice earrings.
My other problem is that I can't stand non-dairy creamer. I think it's made of sugar and spare, random fat. But in my brief experience of America I've found that it's not easy to get hold of milk. I am going to put some milk powder in a little pot and see if I can make it through US customs. Hurray!
On the plus side I'm flying back from New York, where there's a lot of swine flu. Catching swine flu is looking more and more like a sensible thing to do. Apparently it's quite mild, but likely to come back and bite us on our collective behind, possibly in a mutated form, this coming winter. It might be worth getting the cowpox before the smallpox comes along. Although probably flu doesn't work like that. And if by some chance it did kill me enough people know how much I didn't want to go on this trip that my funeral would be satisfyingly petulant.
In other news, I've realised that you can only be in a cantankerous mood for so many years before it just becomes a cantankerous personality. But I'm not yet sure what to do about it.
My other problem is that I can't stand non-dairy creamer. I think it's made of sugar and spare, random fat. But in my brief experience of America I've found that it's not easy to get hold of milk. I am going to put some milk powder in a little pot and see if I can make it through US customs. Hurray!
On the plus side I'm flying back from New York, where there's a lot of swine flu. Catching swine flu is looking more and more like a sensible thing to do. Apparently it's quite mild, but likely to come back and bite us on our collective behind, possibly in a mutated form, this coming winter. It might be worth getting the cowpox before the smallpox comes along. Although probably flu doesn't work like that. And if by some chance it did kill me enough people know how much I didn't want to go on this trip that my funeral would be satisfyingly petulant.
In other news, I've realised that you can only be in a cantankerous mood for so many years before it just becomes a cantankerous personality. But I'm not yet sure what to do about it.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
The epitome of civilisation
1. I am a member of the Sir Frederic Madden Society, a group so obscure that they leave almost no trace on google. It records stuff to do with the British Museum and the British Library, especially from the days before their legal separation in 1973 and their physical separation in the 1990s. The latest issue of their journal (“Staircase”) has some reminiscences of the great Reading Room eccentrics of yesteryear. My favourite is a Miss McDonald, an elderly lady who cycled to the BM in very short shorts every morning, on whom Peter Barber contributed this:
and P. R. Harris this:
(Both from Staircase 13.1 (2008))
2. I’ve noticed this odd phenomenon: quite a few people seem to have problems with the theory of evolution vis-Ã -vis the existence of God. They feel that both cannot be true. Now I am sure that evolution happens -- it’s just so pleasingly elegant and right. Is evolution alone enough to get us from a huge void tasting faintly of raspberries to Nectar points, or a youtube video of someone dressed as Charlie Chaplin dancing with a dog? I don’t know. The human brain is not really fitted for working out probabilities, and when you get down to it the chances of something happening which has already happened is one in one. I’m also sure that God exists, and I don’t know how he works, but I’m betting it’s in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. I am nowhere near intelligent or educated enough to spot any clash between these two things -- they’re both areas in which my ignorance is large and rather beautiful in its simplicity. Anyway, yay for Darwin, a very clever man, and one who observed things and made sense of them for other people -- the best kind of scholarship. (Though to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if Darwin turned out to the Newton of his field, making everything beautifully clear, and at some point an Einstein comes along to confuse us all again.)
What I’ve been wondering though why is it is evolutionary biology which gets all the headlines in this regard. Why is no one’s faith ever shaken by quantum physics? Quantum physics is completely and utterly insane. Is it because it doesn’t involve anyone’s grandmother? I suppose evolution can seem a bit cruel, and people object to that, but if it wasn’t until you heard about evolution that you noticed that there is pain and suffering in the world then you’ve got a strange sort of brain. Why wasn’t the young American man earnestly sharing his mistrust of science this morning on the corner opposite Monsoon shouting “They tell us that something can be a wave and a particle at the same time!” in a voice of shock? If we’re going to play the game of using scientific theories to try to guess the character of God, then quantum physics would suggest a deity with a very strange sense of humour, possibly off his head on some substance. If you look at the world around you, maybe a spring-time scene with flowers, grass, birds and insects, sunshine and some clouds, and then imagine zooming in, you can make basic sense of it for quite a while: the trees get their moisture though capillaries, the breeze is caused by differences in air pressure, the cells in the plants have rigid walls, their DNA is made up of spirals of molecules joined by sharing electrons, and then once you get to that point it suddenly all goes completely insane. The atoms are made of vast amounts of space studded with wierd things that no one is sure exists, which behave oddly, and which anyway don’t make sense in the equations so that even less visible variants of them have to be hypothesised so that we don’t have to believe seemingly impossible things about energy and mass. It’s all totally counter-intuitive. Quantum physics has a big philosophical issue involved as well: people have argued all sorts of things which seem logically to them to follow on from evolution, e.g. that marketplaces should be unregulated and left to fight it out, that the human genepool is in need of interventionist maintenance, etc, suggesting that humans like to make sweeping generalisations from specific scientific points. Why don’t people get more involved in the implications of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Does the impossibility of knowing something mean that it isn’t really there? It’s not something I know much about, I’m just amazed it doesn’t bother people more.
Nonetheless I’m afraid that my copy of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You remains on my “to read” pile. One of the reasons for that is that quantum theory has hurt me, undeniably. I first encountered Schrodinger’s cat in my early teens, at about the same time that my own little dog died in a truly nasty and unexpected way, followed in quick succession by two much-loved family dogs, one of them just a puppy. I’m afraid what I took from it was that until you have observed that your pet is alive it might not be. I then extended this principle logically to all family and loved ones, especially mothers. Because when my mother went on a long car journey, or my father disappeared off to the Himalayas for a bit, I could just as easily imagine them alive and well as dead in a horrible accident, it seemed like until I had observed that one of these things was true both of them were, and Schrodinger’s cat was my justification for this. And I don’t care if that was a misinterpretation of the original thought experiment: thought experiments don’t have right or wrong answers, that’s what they’re for. Very occasionally my father phones me at work, and in the point between someone calling me to the phone and my finding out what he’s called about it still seems like the dice have been thrown into the air and I’m waiting for them to land. Last time he just wanted me to settle an argument he was having with my mother about split infinitives.
... One day, around Christmas time, Miss McDonald fell ill. Her G.P. was not available and so my father, another G.P. who was on the district rota, went to see her. I remember how baffled he was when he returned home. He had found Miss McDonald surrounded not only by the usual cards, but by strings of sausages. Apparently, as a result of her studies in the British Museum Reading Rooms she had come to the conclusion that the sausage was the epitome of civilisation (a belief that I think she said had something to do with the Basques). Be that as it may, her friends presented her with festive sausages to mark birthdays and Christmas. I don’t know whether she ever ate them.
and P. R. Harris this:
In 1957 she had to be rebuked by the Superintendent of the Reading Room (in which she worked for about fifty years from 1929) for occupying more than one desk, and attaching strings to the lights from which she suspended anti-Papal tracts.
(Both from Staircase 13.1 (2008))
2. I’ve noticed this odd phenomenon: quite a few people seem to have problems with the theory of evolution vis-Ã -vis the existence of God. They feel that both cannot be true. Now I am sure that evolution happens -- it’s just so pleasingly elegant and right. Is evolution alone enough to get us from a huge void tasting faintly of raspberries to Nectar points, or a youtube video of someone dressed as Charlie Chaplin dancing with a dog? I don’t know. The human brain is not really fitted for working out probabilities, and when you get down to it the chances of something happening which has already happened is one in one. I’m also sure that God exists, and I don’t know how he works, but I’m betting it’s in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. I am nowhere near intelligent or educated enough to spot any clash between these two things -- they’re both areas in which my ignorance is large and rather beautiful in its simplicity. Anyway, yay for Darwin, a very clever man, and one who observed things and made sense of them for other people -- the best kind of scholarship. (Though to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if Darwin turned out to the Newton of his field, making everything beautifully clear, and at some point an Einstein comes along to confuse us all again.)
What I’ve been wondering though why is it is evolutionary biology which gets all the headlines in this regard. Why is no one’s faith ever shaken by quantum physics? Quantum physics is completely and utterly insane. Is it because it doesn’t involve anyone’s grandmother? I suppose evolution can seem a bit cruel, and people object to that, but if it wasn’t until you heard about evolution that you noticed that there is pain and suffering in the world then you’ve got a strange sort of brain. Why wasn’t the young American man earnestly sharing his mistrust of science this morning on the corner opposite Monsoon shouting “They tell us that something can be a wave and a particle at the same time!” in a voice of shock? If we’re going to play the game of using scientific theories to try to guess the character of God, then quantum physics would suggest a deity with a very strange sense of humour, possibly off his head on some substance. If you look at the world around you, maybe a spring-time scene with flowers, grass, birds and insects, sunshine and some clouds, and then imagine zooming in, you can make basic sense of it for quite a while: the trees get their moisture though capillaries, the breeze is caused by differences in air pressure, the cells in the plants have rigid walls, their DNA is made up of spirals of molecules joined by sharing electrons, and then once you get to that point it suddenly all goes completely insane. The atoms are made of vast amounts of space studded with wierd things that no one is sure exists, which behave oddly, and which anyway don’t make sense in the equations so that even less visible variants of them have to be hypothesised so that we don’t have to believe seemingly impossible things about energy and mass. It’s all totally counter-intuitive. Quantum physics has a big philosophical issue involved as well: people have argued all sorts of things which seem logically to them to follow on from evolution, e.g. that marketplaces should be unregulated and left to fight it out, that the human genepool is in need of interventionist maintenance, etc, suggesting that humans like to make sweeping generalisations from specific scientific points. Why don’t people get more involved in the implications of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Does the impossibility of knowing something mean that it isn’t really there? It’s not something I know much about, I’m just amazed it doesn’t bother people more.
Nonetheless I’m afraid that my copy of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You remains on my “to read” pile. One of the reasons for that is that quantum theory has hurt me, undeniably. I first encountered Schrodinger’s cat in my early teens, at about the same time that my own little dog died in a truly nasty and unexpected way, followed in quick succession by two much-loved family dogs, one of them just a puppy. I’m afraid what I took from it was that until you have observed that your pet is alive it might not be. I then extended this principle logically to all family and loved ones, especially mothers. Because when my mother went on a long car journey, or my father disappeared off to the Himalayas for a bit, I could just as easily imagine them alive and well as dead in a horrible accident, it seemed like until I had observed that one of these things was true both of them were, and Schrodinger’s cat was my justification for this. And I don’t care if that was a misinterpretation of the original thought experiment: thought experiments don’t have right or wrong answers, that’s what they’re for. Very occasionally my father phones me at work, and in the point between someone calling me to the phone and my finding out what he’s called about it still seems like the dice have been thrown into the air and I’m waiting for them to land. Last time he just wanted me to settle an argument he was having with my mother about split infinitives.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
The two cultures
Although there are still scientists who think that the humanities are a self-indulgent waste of time, and humanities people who suspect scientists to be only semi-educated, I think the real divide in academia is between those who work nine to five (or rather, in a standard contract, from nine to five-thirty) and those who work in that wierder less definable way typical of academics. Or more roughly speaking, between admin staff and teachers. My brother works in University admin and recently went to a conference where the keynote paper was on this problem: it was called something like "The jobsworths versus the dinosaurs". (Of course, no academic would go to a paper like that.) Apparently it suggested that if we all thought about the divide less then it might not exist, and maybe this is true in more advanced universities, but here I think it could badly do with thinking about a bit more. Both groups see the other as somewhat parasitic: the academics see the admin people as getting in the way of something that's supposed to be about teaching and research; while the admin people see the academics as breathtakingly unprofessional, and expecting special treatment instead of just getting on with a job. My brother spends a lot of time chasing up basic vital information from unresponsive academics, but the recent removal of a picture which hung on a nearby stairway roused the same group of people into frenzies of outraged activity.
Also the college system magnifies the problem. The fellows give off strong vibes of not considering the staff as colleagues; many of the staff don't really understand what the fellows actually do or when and where they do it. The fellows don't tend to participate in college events like charity coffee mornings, but then again for most fellows a large proportion of their work, and their actual job, takes place elsewhere. Unfortunately class snobbery, in both directions, is definitely involved, both in terms of social class and educational background. It's all rather annoying. The college staff could usefully make a bit more effort to understand what fellows' jobs actually are; and I do think that the college could appropriately stop treating staff as underlings and involve them a bit, or at least keep them informed. There are students on the governing body but no staff; staff used to get governing body minutes but someone put a stop to that.
I sort of come into both worlds, as an ex-fellow and current member of staff, and it has often struck me as odd that I spend my lunch times with one of two different groups of people, all characterised by PhDs and active research interests, predominantly in their 30s, some with children and some without, discussing much the same sort of things -- but these two groups in the same college do not know each other and will never meet. The main difference between the two is in the level of calm -- I've come to the conclusion that having fixed working hours is a far healthier way to live. It's true that the people I work with are a little atypical, but the staff mostly get on reasonably well with each other. This morning having been forced very uncomfortably to get involved in all this stuff I am now in a very bad mood about it. It's tedious and annoying. A small amount of mutual consideration and attention would go a long way towards diffusing the dislike and mistrust that floats around college, but no one's going to do it, and I'm off in September so it won't be my problem any more. Hurray!
Also the college system magnifies the problem. The fellows give off strong vibes of not considering the staff as colleagues; many of the staff don't really understand what the fellows actually do or when and where they do it. The fellows don't tend to participate in college events like charity coffee mornings, but then again for most fellows a large proportion of their work, and their actual job, takes place elsewhere. Unfortunately class snobbery, in both directions, is definitely involved, both in terms of social class and educational background. It's all rather annoying. The college staff could usefully make a bit more effort to understand what fellows' jobs actually are; and I do think that the college could appropriately stop treating staff as underlings and involve them a bit, or at least keep them informed. There are students on the governing body but no staff; staff used to get governing body minutes but someone put a stop to that.
I sort of come into both worlds, as an ex-fellow and current member of staff, and it has often struck me as odd that I spend my lunch times with one of two different groups of people, all characterised by PhDs and active research interests, predominantly in their 30s, some with children and some without, discussing much the same sort of things -- but these two groups in the same college do not know each other and will never meet. The main difference between the two is in the level of calm -- I've come to the conclusion that having fixed working hours is a far healthier way to live. It's true that the people I work with are a little atypical, but the staff mostly get on reasonably well with each other. This morning having been forced very uncomfortably to get involved in all this stuff I am now in a very bad mood about it. It's tedious and annoying. A small amount of mutual consideration and attention would go a long way towards diffusing the dislike and mistrust that floats around college, but no one's going to do it, and I'm off in September so it won't be my problem any more. Hurray!
Monday, 13 April 2009
More nephew
My four-month-old little nephew seems somehow substantially more human than when I met him before. Back at Christmas I don't think I had ever seen anything so lonely in my whole life as my little days-old nephew beating his arms in purple-faced paroxysms of misery. He didn't seem to be asking for anything or expecting that anyone could help, and if you could calm him down by jiggling that seemed mostly incidental -- it was like he was expressing some pure and complete rejection of everything. I remember reading someone saying that we are born alone and we die alone, which I thought was stupid given that birth isn't something we undergo without company, but seeing tiny Arthur made me think perhaps there's something in it.
So it's nice that he's less angry now, and more willing to interact. (In the picture above he's pretending he can already stand up). My parents and I babysat the other day, and I read him the Gruffalo, just because I thought I would enjoy it, but he actually responded to it far more than I was expecting. He kept waving his arms at the book as if wanting to do things to it, although he hasn't yet got the hand-to-eye co-ordination to do anything, really. So I read it all to him, and pointed at the pictures, while he hit them occasionally and made interested noises, and as soon as I had finished I gave him to my mother and he just fell backwards in a deep sleep with his mouth open, as if exhausted by the demands of literature. He slept like a log for about twenty minutes, and then woke up cranky. So I would say that this attempt at practical aunting was a mixed success.
The best thing about him is how very easy it is to like him and enjoy playing with him without in the least wanting one of my own.
In other child-related news I found one of my favourites from when I was very little, Dr Concocter, which it turns out is translated from the Russian. How the Guardian would have approved. It starts:
It goes on to involve quite exciting stuff, when some African animals ask for his help:
Now if I could just find the poem that starts
then I should have recovered much of the excellent stuff of my childhood.
So it's nice that he's less angry now, and more willing to interact. (In the picture above he's pretending he can already stand up). My parents and I babysat the other day, and I read him the Gruffalo, just because I thought I would enjoy it, but he actually responded to it far more than I was expecting. He kept waving his arms at the book as if wanting to do things to it, although he hasn't yet got the hand-to-eye co-ordination to do anything, really. So I read it all to him, and pointed at the pictures, while he hit them occasionally and made interested noises, and as soon as I had finished I gave him to my mother and he just fell backwards in a deep sleep with his mouth open, as if exhausted by the demands of literature. He slept like a log for about twenty minutes, and then woke up cranky. So I would say that this attempt at practical aunting was a mixed success.
The best thing about him is how very easy it is to like him and enjoy playing with him without in the least wanting one of my own.
In other child-related news I found one of my favourites from when I was very little, Dr Concocter, which it turns out is translated from the Russian. How the Guardian would have approved. It starts:
Doctor Concocter sits under a tree;
He's ever so clever. (He has a Degree!)
All the Hares, and the Bears, and the Snakes, and the Weasels
Are sure of a cure for their headaches and measles.
It goes on to involve quite exciting stuff, when some African animals ask for his help:
"Don't you worry!
I shall hurry,
I'll be round to see you soon.
Shall I find you near the River,
Near the old Limpopo River,
Where the rains come down for ever
From the Mountains of the Moon?"
"Oh, our home lies hidden far
Beyond the Isles of Zanzibar,
Where the Hills of Ruwenzori
Touch the Coast of Cinnabar.
Where the empty Kalahari
Sighs for ever and for ever.
Where the jungle twines like ivy
Round the great Limpopo River."
Now if I could just find the poem that starts
Wouldn't you like to be a whale, with a tiny briny eye?
then I should have recovered much of the excellent stuff of my childhood.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Umlaut pop
Röyksopp's new album Junior is also very good. There's an excellent song about robots, sung by mad Swedish singer Robyn. You need the bass so I would recommend it on spotify in preference to the embedded YouTube video below. The video is quite good but not as good as the bass.
Also Norwegian: Annie.
No real visuals on this one, but it's not out yet so you can't get it on spotify.
Also Swedish: BWO, but their latest is a ballad and therefore sub-par.
I also like La Roux's new single; it's whiney in an excellent 80s way, and is about unrequited love. She's not Scandinavian but apparently she is part French. The video involves her driving, but embedding has been disabled by request. Apparently it's not the record companies who do this, but YouTube because of their advertising revenues. Or maybe they have a deal.
Also Norwegian: Annie.
No real visuals on this one, but it's not out yet so you can't get it on spotify.
Also Swedish: BWO, but their latest is a ballad and therefore sub-par.
I also like La Roux's new single; it's whiney in an excellent 80s way, and is about unrequited love. She's not Scandinavian but apparently she is part French. The video involves her driving, but embedding has been disabled by request. Apparently it's not the record companies who do this, but YouTube because of their advertising revenues. Or maybe they have a deal.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
What I have learnt from Cassiodorus
The ennoematic definition denies what it is not.
He that loveth iniquity hateth his own soul.
Laughter at an individual is the trait of a foe.
Stags are timorous but able to eat poison.
In heaven we will all be 33 years old.
The elephant is the most chaste beast as it mates for life.
Moths are a metaphor for sadness.
Priests stop their ears with incense.
Jerome interprets the name Basan to mean aridity.
Merchants are not necessarily evil.
The caterpillar represents base love. (Blake?)
Pelicans have very bad digestions, and live alone.
Barbarous comes from barba, beard, + rus, country, e.g. barbarians are bearded people from the country.
Accidie is the nodding of the soul.
The sparrow is the most circumspect of birds.
Augustine interprets the name Basan to mean confusion.
There are many different ways to cross the Red Sea; one of them is virginity.
Mules, rocks, logs, etc, praise God by being what they are. (Smart?)
The ravens' children are innocent.
Dragons lie in pools to cool themselves down, and eat elephants as easily as if they were flies. They signify strong-minded people.
Utterances are always to be related to the disposition of the speaker.
He that loveth iniquity hateth his own soul.
Laughter at an individual is the trait of a foe.
Stags are timorous but able to eat poison.
In heaven we will all be 33 years old.
The elephant is the most chaste beast as it mates for life.
Moths are a metaphor for sadness.
Priests stop their ears with incense.
Jerome interprets the name Basan to mean aridity.
Merchants are not necessarily evil.
The caterpillar represents base love. (Blake?)
Pelicans have very bad digestions, and live alone.
Barbarous comes from barba, beard, + rus, country, e.g. barbarians are bearded people from the country.
Accidie is the nodding of the soul.
The sparrow is the most circumspect of birds.
Augustine interprets the name Basan to mean confusion.
There are many different ways to cross the Red Sea; one of them is virginity.
Mules, rocks, logs, etc, praise God by being what they are. (Smart?)
The ravens' children are innocent.
Dragons lie in pools to cool themselves down, and eat elephants as easily as if they were flies. They signify strong-minded people.
Utterances are always to be related to the disposition of the speaker.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Public service announcement
By the way, it is important to note that you have to start Battlestar Galactica with the mini-series, not series 1. They did a mini-series as a sort of extended pilot before the show proper was commissioned. A friend of mine was very annoyed when he bought the first series and found that the first episode started "Previously on Battlestar Galactica".
On the plus side
1. The new Pet Shop Boys album is great. It was produced by Xenomania, so has some very tuney bits, but is also very Pet Shop Boys. PSB-like moments include:
• Chris vocals: "Who do you think you are, Captain Britain?" deflating nostalgic Neil lyrics about picnics of yesteryear
• References to nineteenth-century European politics in "The King of Rome" (which doesn't just sound like a Pet Shop Boys song, but sounds like a specific Pet Shop Boys song, perhaps off Behaviour)
• Tchaikovsky sample
• Song about Tony Blair. It's called "Legacy"
• Vulnerable love song, called "Vulnerable", which was apparently once supposed to be a duet with Carlo Bruni
There's also a bit in the second half of "More than a Dream" where it suddenly goes all Roxette. This is the best song on the album, I think. Here it is in rather poor quality:
2. Battlestar Galactica hurray! There was something in the Guardian the other day about how this might be better than the Wire. I think it was one of the Graun's irritating troll pieces hoping to raise a reaction by transgressing some given of leftish social mores about which none of us real people, i.e. not journalists, actually care anyway. Of course I prefer Battlestar Galactica -- I gave up on the Wire in boredom and mild disgust quite early on in the second series. (Although I did like the music -- it made me think I should listen to more hip hop.) But Battlestar Galactica I do like very much. I have a lot of respect for sci-fi and fantasy; they're too easily dismissed as mere genre, but, from Swift to Vonnegut, they're the best way of exploring ideas without being tedious or pompous. Of course sci-fi can be tedious or pompous when it's done badly, but a straight literary novel about ideas is often unreadable. I prefer these things in parables, it's more interesting.
As for Battlestar Galactica itself, the Guardian writer is right about the start of season 3 -- it is slightly breathtaking how they seem to be saying "America, this is how the Iraqis see you." Could they even have got away with this in any other context? Cherie Blair was pretty harshly slapped down for saying that she could understand why some people ended up feeling that suicide bombing was the only option. This is why sci-fi and fantasy are great. And a scene at the Cylons' war council is pretty sharp too. Plus something which happened in series two made me go so far as to formulate a personal philosophy, and I almost got as far as asking some philosophers I know what it's called so that I could say "I am a something-ian" or "I subscribe to something-ism". This to me is intelligent television; something that doesn't lay it on too heavily, but provokes thought. I never got why the Wire was supposed to be so intelligent. Because it's showing lots of sides of the same story? Because it's full of people who are variously compromised, and things happen because of chance political circumstances rather than for ideal reasons? These seem to be just truisms to me. Haven't cop shows always been about those things? I am genuinely curious about this, and would welcome any better explanation of what it is that I so obviously missed. In the meantime Battlestar Galactica has fantastic space explosions, and sinister robots based on ancient Greek helmets, and people who believe in one true god emerging from strange baths.
3. I liked Lucy Mangan's obituary for Jade Goody. Also her take on motherhood seems pretty spot on to me, insofar as I know anything about it, and I'm rather glad not to. Maybe Lucy Mangan could be Britain's Jon Stewart? We could rather do with one, and it's clear Charlie Brooker isn't going to manage it.
• Chris vocals: "Who do you think you are, Captain Britain?" deflating nostalgic Neil lyrics about picnics of yesteryear
• References to nineteenth-century European politics in "The King of Rome" (which doesn't just sound like a Pet Shop Boys song, but sounds like a specific Pet Shop Boys song, perhaps off Behaviour)
• Tchaikovsky sample
• Song about Tony Blair. It's called "Legacy"
• Vulnerable love song, called "Vulnerable", which was apparently once supposed to be a duet with Carlo Bruni
There's also a bit in the second half of "More than a Dream" where it suddenly goes all Roxette. This is the best song on the album, I think. Here it is in rather poor quality:
2. Battlestar Galactica hurray! There was something in the Guardian the other day about how this might be better than the Wire. I think it was one of the Graun's irritating troll pieces hoping to raise a reaction by transgressing some given of leftish social mores about which none of us real people, i.e. not journalists, actually care anyway. Of course I prefer Battlestar Galactica -- I gave up on the Wire in boredom and mild disgust quite early on in the second series. (Although I did like the music -- it made me think I should listen to more hip hop.) But Battlestar Galactica I do like very much. I have a lot of respect for sci-fi and fantasy; they're too easily dismissed as mere genre, but, from Swift to Vonnegut, they're the best way of exploring ideas without being tedious or pompous. Of course sci-fi can be tedious or pompous when it's done badly, but a straight literary novel about ideas is often unreadable. I prefer these things in parables, it's more interesting.
As for Battlestar Galactica itself, the Guardian writer is right about the start of season 3 -- it is slightly breathtaking how they seem to be saying "America, this is how the Iraqis see you." Could they even have got away with this in any other context? Cherie Blair was pretty harshly slapped down for saying that she could understand why some people ended up feeling that suicide bombing was the only option. This is why sci-fi and fantasy are great. And a scene at the Cylons' war council is pretty sharp too. Plus something which happened in series two made me go so far as to formulate a personal philosophy, and I almost got as far as asking some philosophers I know what it's called so that I could say "I am a something-ian" or "I subscribe to something-ism". This to me is intelligent television; something that doesn't lay it on too heavily, but provokes thought. I never got why the Wire was supposed to be so intelligent. Because it's showing lots of sides of the same story? Because it's full of people who are variously compromised, and things happen because of chance political circumstances rather than for ideal reasons? These seem to be just truisms to me. Haven't cop shows always been about those things? I am genuinely curious about this, and would welcome any better explanation of what it is that I so obviously missed. In the meantime Battlestar Galactica has fantastic space explosions, and sinister robots based on ancient Greek helmets, and people who believe in one true god emerging from strange baths.
3. I liked Lucy Mangan's obituary for Jade Goody. Also her take on motherhood seems pretty spot on to me, insofar as I know anything about it, and I'm rather glad not to. Maybe Lucy Mangan could be Britain's Jon Stewart? We could rather do with one, and it's clear Charlie Brooker isn't going to manage it.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Agnes was undeterred
I have just finished Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice, which I enjoyed very much. It's about Scottish twins who made improbable discoveries in Middle Eastern Biblical manuscripts. The book's not out until next week, but because one of the twins was married to Samuel "Satan" Lewis, Parker Librarian, we've got an early copy in the library. The sisters were very likeable. They're also fine examples of the sort of person I completely fail to live up to being. Their upbringing, according to the tenets of what the author calls "fearless Presbyterianism", was rather similar to my own; their father actively encouraged them to read books seen as controversial at the time, like Darwin's writings. They took the attitude that better manuscripts of Biblical texts and better understanding of the variants which are found in the MS tradition are things to be desired not feared; this at a time when it was seriously suggested that Hebrew should not be taught in seminaries because access to the original texts just confused everyone. The older twin, Agnes, is particularly like the fictional character of Amelia Peabody in Elizabeth Peters' Egyptologist murder mysteries, and the stories of their travels are rather fun. I was surprised to learn that "Nile travellers were advised to bring with them a small pistol for use at dinner parties" but this turned out to be a more audible substitute for a gong, to let people on other boats know that it was time to dress for dinner, rather than as a defence from rampaging crocodiles, or anything of that sort.
There are a few little errors in the text, but I think that's just one of those things. People who can write text without errors are rare beasts. The Parker library does not contain three-quarters of all surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; I have often heard it said that it has one quarter of them, but I'm not sure that's true either.
I really want to go to Sinai. I also yearn to go back to Jerusalem.
There are a few little errors in the text, but I think that's just one of those things. People who can write text without errors are rare beasts. The Parker library does not contain three-quarters of all surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; I have often heard it said that it has one quarter of them, but I'm not sure that's true either.
I really want to go to Sinai. I also yearn to go back to Jerusalem.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Boredom versus interesting things
1. I am bored with Stephen Fry.
2. Also bored with: The Guardian. I can't believe that today's Guide has an article explaining such recondite slang as "Funky", "Mash-up", "Preppy" and "Lolcats". They make me feel young and hip: and I am an Anglo-Saxonist whose recent work has mostly been on charters or liturgy.
3. The contents of the last Downside Review were sent to me by the zetoc alerts service. It apparently includes articles by "Osb, H. H." and "Osb, J. R. F.". So much for Benedictine anonymity. Osb makes rather a good surname.
4. Here you can see a man with an excellent beard talk about the ancient Babylonians.
5. I bought myself another little toy -- a small uncomplicated netbook. It's great in the UL. After some struggling I have finally managed to set up a mini network so I can share files between my Vista laptop and my XP netbook. Hurray! This sort of thing is very good value; it makes me feel all clever. Bless its little cotton socks.
6. Suddenly this week I have two possible options for future employment. Someone has offered me some work I would love, and I have also got an interview for a job which would be career-type stuff. The two jobs are very different and I am feeling a bit confused about what I ought to want. Still, the possibility of being able to pay the mortgage is a pleasant one. Hurray again!
7. I went to the Cockerell exhibition at the Fitzwilliam. It is great; lots of very high-quality stuff which isn't usually on display (some of it because it's light-sensitive). The real revelation for me was the work of scribe and illuminator Florence Kingsford. I usually dislike modern calligraphy, but her stuff is beautiful. She was utterly penniless, and Cockerell tried to help her get commissions and encourage her to keep going in her work while she copied Egyptian artefacts for Petrie, who was renowned for the terrible working conditions which he expected his staff to endure. After a bit Cockerell married her, and as his wife she was known as Kate Cockerell. She almost immediately had three children and developed a nasty slow form of sclerosis, the combination of which ended her career. But her work was beautiful, far better than William Morris's. There's a picture at the bottom of this page. She's one of those women who isn't in ODNB except as a wife and a mother (her son invented the hovercraft); the original DNB was notorious for that sort of thing, but wasn't the ODNB supposed to rectify it?
8. I shouldn't just repost stuff which popjustice has already put up, but I've been listening to this quite a bit recently. I like the way that they rapidly alternate between quite plain suits and outfits which I would be hard put to characterise.
2. Also bored with: The Guardian. I can't believe that today's Guide has an article explaining such recondite slang as "Funky", "Mash-up", "Preppy" and "Lolcats". They make me feel young and hip: and I am an Anglo-Saxonist whose recent work has mostly been on charters or liturgy.
3. The contents of the last Downside Review were sent to me by the zetoc alerts service. It apparently includes articles by "Osb, H. H." and "Osb, J. R. F.". So much for Benedictine anonymity. Osb makes rather a good surname.
4. Here you can see a man with an excellent beard talk about the ancient Babylonians.
5. I bought myself another little toy -- a small uncomplicated netbook. It's great in the UL. After some struggling I have finally managed to set up a mini network so I can share files between my Vista laptop and my XP netbook. Hurray! This sort of thing is very good value; it makes me feel all clever. Bless its little cotton socks.
6. Suddenly this week I have two possible options for future employment. Someone has offered me some work I would love, and I have also got an interview for a job which would be career-type stuff. The two jobs are very different and I am feeling a bit confused about what I ought to want. Still, the possibility of being able to pay the mortgage is a pleasant one. Hurray again!
7. I went to the Cockerell exhibition at the Fitzwilliam. It is great; lots of very high-quality stuff which isn't usually on display (some of it because it's light-sensitive). The real revelation for me was the work of scribe and illuminator Florence Kingsford. I usually dislike modern calligraphy, but her stuff is beautiful. She was utterly penniless, and Cockerell tried to help her get commissions and encourage her to keep going in her work while she copied Egyptian artefacts for Petrie, who was renowned for the terrible working conditions which he expected his staff to endure. After a bit Cockerell married her, and as his wife she was known as Kate Cockerell. She almost immediately had three children and developed a nasty slow form of sclerosis, the combination of which ended her career. But her work was beautiful, far better than William Morris's. There's a picture at the bottom of this page. She's one of those women who isn't in ODNB except as a wife and a mother (her son invented the hovercraft); the original DNB was notorious for that sort of thing, but wasn't the ODNB supposed to rectify it?
8. I shouldn't just repost stuff which popjustice has already put up, but I've been listening to this quite a bit recently. I like the way that they rapidly alternate between quite plain suits and outfits which I would be hard put to characterise.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Things I have said before
1. It seems that Julie Myerson is the mother from the irritating "Living With Teenagers" column in the Guardian. This rather puts paid to her husband's claim that writing about their family is an emergency action -- she must now have been doing it continually for years. I mentioned on this blog before how annoying I found that column; she treated her teenage children like toddlers, which is pretty insulting. Still I'm not one to judge because I have no children, and I'm sure that child-raising is a very hard thing to do.
2. Cherry Red records has re-released Frazier Chorus's Sue. Also I found a blog which had a copy of Furniture's On a Bus with Peter Nero. Hurray!
3. One occasional recurring theme of this blog is the danger of eminent professors. I went to hear a paper this afternoon and afterwards got cornered by one of the usual suspects, who is trying to get me to be secretary of a learned society. I pointed out that my personal circumstances are rather up in the air and that this October I may be off to retrain as an accountant or some such. That, he pointed out, would not disqualify me from being secretary. I am treading carefully now. He refused to take my refusal as totally definite even when I suggested finding a Benedictine to do it. On the one hand it's nice that several people suggested me. But, I'm not sure it's utterly 100% positive to be seen as ideal secretary material.
2. Cherry Red records has re-released Frazier Chorus's Sue. Also I found a blog which had a copy of Furniture's On a Bus with Peter Nero. Hurray!
3. One occasional recurring theme of this blog is the danger of eminent professors. I went to hear a paper this afternoon and afterwards got cornered by one of the usual suspects, who is trying to get me to be secretary of a learned society. I pointed out that my personal circumstances are rather up in the air and that this October I may be off to retrain as an accountant or some such. That, he pointed out, would not disqualify me from being secretary. I am treading carefully now. He refused to take my refusal as totally definite even when I suggested finding a Benedictine to do it. On the one hand it's nice that several people suggested me. But, I'm not sure it's utterly 100% positive to be seen as ideal secretary material.
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