As some of you may know, I have books. I don’t seem to be able to go anywhere without picking up one or two…or twenty.
There’ve been trips to London where I went up and down Charing Cross Road buying books—to the point that my luggage had to be hand searched at Heathrow because the X-rays wouldn’t penetrate the dense layer of literature. Once I had to buy a gym bag at a London street market to accommodate all my additions.
And then there was the trip to Paris, when I bought so many at museums and bookstores I had to take a taxi to the Gare du Nord because I knew that even with wheeled bags I wouldn’t be able to get across the correspondance of the Métro (where there are beaucoup de stairs). The guy who helped lift my bags onto the Eurostar is probably still walking funny.
Or the jaunt across the Channel to Normandy. On my return the boot of my car was filled with equal weights of books and Champagne.
When my London household was being moved back to the US, one of the packers commented that he’d never seen so many books. (Or shoes, but that’s a different matter entirely.) I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was only packing three bookcases and I had five more at home.
Luckily my Virginia house had two stair landings large enough to accommodate two bookcases each, and I was able to put six cases in the office upstairs for history and reference; three downstairs for fiction, poetry and psychology; two on the upper landing for arts and children’s lit; and two on the lower landing for travel, literature, classics, drama, etc. Oh—and one on the main floor by the kitchen for cookbooks.
The books were the prime challenge when it came to finding a permanent home here. Once I liked a place I had to start imagining where the cases would go, and one by one the prospects got crossed off the list. With some people it's the grand piano; with me it's the books. (At least 70% of them and all but five of the cases spent the last ten months in storage, so getting them out where I can read them is a major endorphin rush.)
Okay, so on this last move, distributing my collection over the three floors, it occurred to me that perhaps it’s time to cull the collection some. I mean—I did give away a couple of cartons worth when I left Virginia, things that were really tatty or duplicates. And I got the collection down to around 2700. But I thought maybe I could cut back some more.
So I went through with a machete—I mean, I was utterly ruthless, hacking left and right on three floors. (The landings here aren’t big enough for bookcases.) and I’ve pulled out a grand total of…twelve books.
I refuse to confess to being pathetic. Maybe it's a Bas Bleu thing.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Phoning it in
In the category of nice-try-but-not-going-to-happen, some business etiquette consultant has declared July “National Cell Phone Courtesy Month.”
To give you an idea of how futile this concept is, she made this unilateral declaration in 2002.
Yeah, you’ve noticed how many folks have taken up the idea in the past seven years, haven’t you?
This woman states the blindingly obvious—turn the damned thing off during meetings, movies, weddings & funerals; remember that when you’re in public your call is, too; not every call takes precedence over your real-time companions; etc. She puts numbers on them, like that’s going to imbue them with greater force than just being sensible imparts.
But the very fact that she has to state the obvious is an indicator that mobile phone users don’t give a toss about courtesy, sensibility or even the obvious.
& she doesn’t even go into the whole thing about people driving with one hand holding the triple shot mochaccino & the other the iPhone, weaving through traffic as though the Almighty Himself were clearing the way in a T-34. Those morons are the 21st Century justification for the Second Amendment. In fact, we should be issued 9mm pistols just for the purpose of removing them from the gene pool.
So, observe the made-up month-long focus however you see fit. Don't make me a lick o' difference, since I only use mine to check my email.
To give you an idea of how futile this concept is, she made this unilateral declaration in 2002.
Yeah, you’ve noticed how many folks have taken up the idea in the past seven years, haven’t you?
This woman states the blindingly obvious—turn the damned thing off during meetings, movies, weddings & funerals; remember that when you’re in public your call is, too; not every call takes precedence over your real-time companions; etc. She puts numbers on them, like that’s going to imbue them with greater force than just being sensible imparts.
But the very fact that she has to state the obvious is an indicator that mobile phone users don’t give a toss about courtesy, sensibility or even the obvious.
& she doesn’t even go into the whole thing about people driving with one hand holding the triple shot mochaccino & the other the iPhone, weaving through traffic as though the Almighty Himself were clearing the way in a T-34. Those morons are the 21st Century justification for the Second Amendment. In fact, we should be issued 9mm pistols just for the purpose of removing them from the gene pool.
So, observe the made-up month-long focus however you see fit. Don't make me a lick o' difference, since I only use mine to check my email.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Summer in the Citi
I don’t know how I missed this, but it seems Citigroup, which has proved itself again & again on both a micro and a macro level to be incapable of managing its way out of a paper bag, is at it again.
Restricted in the ability to hand out obscene bonuses to employees accustomed to receiving them—restricted because they took massive amounts of TARP money to bail their bespoke-clad asses out of collapse—they’ve announced that, well, they’ll just raise base salaries to these exceedingly valuable employees…by up to 50%.
It’s the same old wheeze—have to do something to retain the best and the brightest if we want to survive, blah, blah, blah.
What I just don’t get is: if these are the best and the brightest you’ve got, and they’re the very ones who maneuvered you into collapse, isn’t it time to bring in the JVs, who might actually still be capable of grasping the concept that you’re supposed to be doing something to add actual, you know, value to something besides your own bank accounts? Like, here’s a thought, your customers and your shareholders?
What this just proves is that the obvious and immutable goal of these organizations is to perpetuate their own existence and their own greed. Everything else is a massive joke they’re playing on the rest of the world, whom they (apparently rightly) regard as nothing but suckers.
Restricted in the ability to hand out obscene bonuses to employees accustomed to receiving them—restricted because they took massive amounts of TARP money to bail their bespoke-clad asses out of collapse—they’ve announced that, well, they’ll just raise base salaries to these exceedingly valuable employees…by up to 50%.
It’s the same old wheeze—have to do something to retain the best and the brightest if we want to survive, blah, blah, blah.
What I just don’t get is: if these are the best and the brightest you’ve got, and they’re the very ones who maneuvered you into collapse, isn’t it time to bring in the JVs, who might actually still be capable of grasping the concept that you’re supposed to be doing something to add actual, you know, value to something besides your own bank accounts? Like, here’s a thought, your customers and your shareholders?
What this just proves is that the obvious and immutable goal of these organizations is to perpetuate their own existence and their own greed. Everything else is a massive joke they’re playing on the rest of the world, whom they (apparently rightly) regard as nothing but suckers.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Another name on the Wall
There’s a folk tale about a not-the-brightest boy who’s always applying the lesson of the last problem to the current situation, with risible results.
Every day his mother sends him off to someone’s house to bring home something. Every day he ruins whatever it is by using the previous day’s method of transport—so he puts butter on top of his head (which was how he should have carried something else, which I can’t recall), & it melts down his face. He drags a fish behind him on a string, because the previous day that’s how he should have brought home a puppy, etc.
I often think of that folktale (and apologies for not remembering it better—I was in grade school when I read it) when examining how wars are fought. The French, in particular, always seem to be using the previous war’s strategies when they’re losing the current one.
Anyhow, the tale cropped up again in my mind when I heard the news that the architect of the Vietnam War died Sunday, in bed, at age 93.
Robert S. McNamara and other best-and-brightest of his generation just could not get over the whole appeasement scenario, or the sense that Harry S. Truman lost China to the Communists. Not that I’m a proponent of appeasement, but, really, you have to put things into context. And McNamara and the others just couldn’t seem to do that.
And so we spent more than a decade and 58,000 American lives (and God knows how many others’) following those policies.
The thing about McNamara, though, that gives me hope is that, after 30 years of stalwart silence he eventually admitted that his policies had been wrong, that he had been wrong. In the end he was a mensch.
And I’ll bet we’ll wait a lot longer than 30 years for anyone from the recently-departed administration to admit that their Iran-Iraq-war-on-terrorism policies were wrong on a massive scale.
Can't you just see that butter melting down their faces?
Every day his mother sends him off to someone’s house to bring home something. Every day he ruins whatever it is by using the previous day’s method of transport—so he puts butter on top of his head (which was how he should have carried something else, which I can’t recall), & it melts down his face. He drags a fish behind him on a string, because the previous day that’s how he should have brought home a puppy, etc.
I often think of that folktale (and apologies for not remembering it better—I was in grade school when I read it) when examining how wars are fought. The French, in particular, always seem to be using the previous war’s strategies when they’re losing the current one.
Anyhow, the tale cropped up again in my mind when I heard the news that the architect of the Vietnam War died Sunday, in bed, at age 93.
Robert S. McNamara and other best-and-brightest of his generation just could not get over the whole appeasement scenario, or the sense that Harry S. Truman lost China to the Communists. Not that I’m a proponent of appeasement, but, really, you have to put things into context. And McNamara and the others just couldn’t seem to do that.
And so we spent more than a decade and 58,000 American lives (and God knows how many others’) following those policies.
The thing about McNamara, though, that gives me hope is that, after 30 years of stalwart silence he eventually admitted that his policies had been wrong, that he had been wrong. In the end he was a mensch.
And I’ll bet we’ll wait a lot longer than 30 years for anyone from the recently-departed administration to admit that their Iran-Iraq-war-on-terrorism policies were wrong on a massive scale.
Can't you just see that butter melting down their faces?
Monday, July 6, 2009
Prognosis negative
Well, General Motors got a pass in bankruptcy court. US District Judge Robert Gerber has approved GM’s plan to slice and dice its assets at the expense of the usual fall guy: the US taxpayer.
The deal (if I may so characterize it) is that GM’s viable (in the loose sense of the term) will be moved into an entity 61% owned by the US government, and; whatever doesn’t make the cut ends up on the bankruptcy court floor to be picked over by the usual vultures.
What this does is wipe away any unsecured claims, essentially screwing bondholders, retired employees and people who’ve sued the company for building crap cars. GM's management, present and past, are doing the happy dance on that one, no doubt.
It remains to be seen what will be defined as “viable” and what as dross. Even as we speak, the EU is losing unity over which country will get to keep its taxpayers working under whoever buys the Opel unit from GM. So far Germany seems to have the biggest pockets (and the most immediate elections to spur the efforts) to save jobs and the smaller countries like Belgium and Britain are muttering and scuffing their feet in the dust.
But I’m not holding my breath that anything particularly good will come of this.
The deal (if I may so characterize it) is that GM’s viable (in the loose sense of the term) will be moved into an entity 61% owned by the US government, and; whatever doesn’t make the cut ends up on the bankruptcy court floor to be picked over by the usual vultures.
What this does is wipe away any unsecured claims, essentially screwing bondholders, retired employees and people who’ve sued the company for building crap cars. GM's management, present and past, are doing the happy dance on that one, no doubt.
It remains to be seen what will be defined as “viable” and what as dross. Even as we speak, the EU is losing unity over which country will get to keep its taxpayers working under whoever buys the Opel unit from GM. So far Germany seems to have the biggest pockets (and the most immediate elections to spur the efforts) to save jobs and the smaller countries like Belgium and Britain are muttering and scuffing their feet in the dust.
But I’m not holding my breath that anything particularly good will come of this.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Into the sunset
Further to the demise of Kodachrome, the WSJ waxes elegiac about everything that made this slide film such a sensuous medium.
As I was putting away the not-so-critical stuff (meaning: you don’t need it to eat or sleep), I came upon my bag o’ film, which includes two 36-exposure rolls of Kodachrome 64, a roll of TMAX 100 and one of TMAX 3200 black & white, and a mass of Fujicolor color negative film. That stopped me in my tracks—even more than finding the lead pouch I used to put this stuff in to go through airport checked luggage X-raying.
What a blast from the past. Makes me think about all the years of photographs I’ve taken (my theory was that—especially with slide film—I’d just shoot everything that appealed to me, and then pick out the few keepers from each roll; it worked out pretty well, generally), all the places I’ve hauled all those cameras. It’s like my life is wrapped up in that more than in anything else.
And I wonder why I seemed to have no trouble learning to shoot with the Nikon rangefinder, with having to read the external light meter and calculate the f-stop & shutter speed; or the various Minolta SLRs I went through; but this bloody Nikon DSLR just makes me want to drop-kick it across the Puget Sound?
Well—death, change and taxes are the only constants, I guess.
As I was putting away the not-so-critical stuff (meaning: you don’t need it to eat or sleep), I came upon my bag o’ film, which includes two 36-exposure rolls of Kodachrome 64, a roll of TMAX 100 and one of TMAX 3200 black & white, and a mass of Fujicolor color negative film. That stopped me in my tracks—even more than finding the lead pouch I used to put this stuff in to go through airport checked luggage X-raying.
What a blast from the past. Makes me think about all the years of photographs I’ve taken (my theory was that—especially with slide film—I’d just shoot everything that appealed to me, and then pick out the few keepers from each roll; it worked out pretty well, generally), all the places I’ve hauled all those cameras. It’s like my life is wrapped up in that more than in anything else.
And I wonder why I seemed to have no trouble learning to shoot with the Nikon rangefinder, with having to read the external light meter and calculate the f-stop & shutter speed; or the various Minolta SLRs I went through; but this bloody Nikon DSLR just makes me want to drop-kick it across the Puget Sound?
Well—death, change and taxes are the only constants, I guess.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Emerald City Blues
Life in the Third World continues.
I finally have a refrigerator in place, although it took four weeks and two vendors to manage it. Now to get the builder to touch up the delivery scuffs & gouges in the stairwells, which were clearly designed without imagining that someone would want to move anything into the house.
Next in line: get the Sears charges for appliances removed from my AmEx account. They shouldn't have been applied to begin with because Sears received the money from the builder on 10 June, but six emails and three phone calls still haven't resulted in any, you know, action. I've finally sicced AmEx on them by disputing the charges.
Also, despite four calls to Seattle City Light (including one from the builder), I still don't have my garbage/recycling bins, so I continue to make early morning runs to dumpsters. (And, BTW, yes--the light company also provides water, sewer and trash; although apparently not in a timely manner.) I'm not going to be happy about them when they finally arrive anyhow: seems the trash bin isn't a bin at all, but a box, which I'll have to carry to the pick-up point. Which is more than 100 meters from my actual house.
Seriously--when people assured me I'd love the PNW because "people are so laid back", they had to have been referring to service providers.
Don't have approved trash receptacles? Just hang on to the trash until we get around to it.
One more indignity (I was going to say "final", but I've no doubt that Seattle has many, many more in store): my final water bill ($172 for 60 days; in Virginia it was $25/quarter) from the City of Bellevue contains a $10 "additional charge".
It's for "final bill".
Pity I didn't bring the gelignite with me.
I finally have a refrigerator in place, although it took four weeks and two vendors to manage it. Now to get the builder to touch up the delivery scuffs & gouges in the stairwells, which were clearly designed without imagining that someone would want to move anything into the house.
Next in line: get the Sears charges for appliances removed from my AmEx account. They shouldn't have been applied to begin with because Sears received the money from the builder on 10 June, but six emails and three phone calls still haven't resulted in any, you know, action. I've finally sicced AmEx on them by disputing the charges.
Also, despite four calls to Seattle City Light (including one from the builder), I still don't have my garbage/recycling bins, so I continue to make early morning runs to dumpsters. (And, BTW, yes--the light company also provides water, sewer and trash; although apparently not in a timely manner.) I'm not going to be happy about them when they finally arrive anyhow: seems the trash bin isn't a bin at all, but a box, which I'll have to carry to the pick-up point. Which is more than 100 meters from my actual house.
Seriously--when people assured me I'd love the PNW because "people are so laid back", they had to have been referring to service providers.
Don't have approved trash receptacles? Just hang on to the trash until we get around to it.
One more indignity (I was going to say "final", but I've no doubt that Seattle has many, many more in store): my final water bill ($172 for 60 days; in Virginia it was $25/quarter) from the City of Bellevue contains a $10 "additional charge".
It's for "final bill".
Pity I didn't bring the gelignite with me.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Remembering the first day of the Somme
Ninety-three years ago today the British Army impaled itself upon the idea that if you only throw more men at entrenched machine gun emplacements, you’ll achieve a breakthrough in a war of stagnation.
The first day of the Battle of the Somme cost the Brits 58,000 casualties (almost 20,000 of them dead), but won no breakthrough. Neither did it break through the dense crania of the British generals. The new commander, Sir Douglas Haig, remained boneheaded to his death, which unfortunately came long after the Armistice in 1918.
(Generals typically were not in danger of injuries, unless they fell off their polo ponies or slipped on the floor of the officers’ mess.)
No, wave after wave of Tommies went over the top from 1 July to 18 November without enough land to grow a crop of wheat changing hands. The ground was churned to sludge by unbelievable numbers of artillery bombardments; farmers are still turning up unexploded shells as they tend their fields. In the end the butcher’s bill ran to 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 Germans dead, missing and; wounded.
So pause a moment and think of the day when the sun truly began to set on the British Empire, and consider the tens of thousands of men who’ve rested along the battle line for the past 93 years.
The first day of the Battle of the Somme cost the Brits 58,000 casualties (almost 20,000 of them dead), but won no breakthrough. Neither did it break through the dense crania of the British generals. The new commander, Sir Douglas Haig, remained boneheaded to his death, which unfortunately came long after the Armistice in 1918.
(Generals typically were not in danger of injuries, unless they fell off their polo ponies or slipped on the floor of the officers’ mess.)
No, wave after wave of Tommies went over the top from 1 July to 18 November without enough land to grow a crop of wheat changing hands. The ground was churned to sludge by unbelievable numbers of artillery bombardments; farmers are still turning up unexploded shells as they tend their fields. In the end the butcher’s bill ran to 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 Germans dead, missing and; wounded.
So pause a moment and think of the day when the sun truly began to set on the British Empire, and consider the tens of thousands of men who’ve rested along the battle line for the past 93 years.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Another one bites the dust
Well, well, well—seems that, while justice is still a dream, the law still has some edge on her sword.
US District Court Judge Denny Chin sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years in prison for running the largest (so far) Ponzi scheme in US history. This is the full sentence demanded by the prosecution & 12.5 times what Madoff’s attorneys had suggested as a “reasonable” term.
Still not enough for the hundreds of victims of Madoff’s scheme, but I guess it’s a start. & because Madoff pleaded guilty there’s no way that death can vacate the verdict, as it did with Kenny Lay, of Enron fame. (I still want them to dig him up to make sure the bastard’s actually dead.)
Let’s hope the rest of the greed-a-rama set on Wall Street pays attention.
US District Court Judge Denny Chin sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years in prison for running the largest (so far) Ponzi scheme in US history. This is the full sentence demanded by the prosecution & 12.5 times what Madoff’s attorneys had suggested as a “reasonable” term.
Still not enough for the hundreds of victims of Madoff’s scheme, but I guess it’s a start. & because Madoff pleaded guilty there’s no way that death can vacate the verdict, as it did with Kenny Lay, of Enron fame. (I still want them to dig him up to make sure the bastard’s actually dead.)
Let’s hope the rest of the greed-a-rama set on Wall Street pays attention.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Summer wines
Although I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms over Eric Felten throwing over his drinks column in the Wall Street Journal, that publication’s wine writers are taking up some of the slack.
This week they give recommendations on jug wines (not jugs, really, but 1.5 litre bottles), just in time for the holiday weekend.
I have to say that I’ve not got much hope of finding the selection here in Washington state; & certainly not at the prices quoted, since the state government jacks up prices for some unknown reason. (Unless it’s just the old revenue wheeze.)
But you may be able to find some. If so—salud!
This week they give recommendations on jug wines (not jugs, really, but 1.5 litre bottles), just in time for the holiday weekend.
I have to say that I’ve not got much hope of finding the selection here in Washington state; & certainly not at the prices quoted, since the state government jacks up prices for some unknown reason. (Unless it’s just the old revenue wheeze.)
But you may be able to find some. If so—salud!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)