Thursday, December 29, 2005

Adding to the Secret of the Secret Vatican Archives

The Vatican Secret Archives have 100 rooms and 100 kilometers of "documentation."

(Thanks, Diane Sawyer, who really is very beautiful in person.)

[Er, the link to my own blog doesn't seem to be working (above). See Wednesday, April 20, 2005.]

(Addendum: The popes used to sit occasionally on "a strange purple, marble chair." It had a "strange hole" in it, through which a cardinal could occasionally stick his hand, apparently in order to confirm that the pope was a man. The operative phrase was: "tesiculos habet." So says Diane Sawyer, who, as you know now, is really very beautiful in person.)

Orbalina Miranda: Not the Name of a Circus

Orbalina Miranda.

The story in which this name appears is about a 2-year-old boy being found drunk after his mother, Orbalina Miranda, went into labor on Long Island and left her kids in the care of her cousin.

Good. Name.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Roger Toussaint You Need to Talk to My Landlord

Transit strike. Fluish thing.

Fine.

Some weeks suck.

Fine.

But what really gets me is blowing a fuse. Literally blowing a fuse in my house. Because my house is wired for sometime at the turn of the century. And I’m serious. It’s on whatever electrical wattage or voltage came before the standard U.S. one now. (I’m not looking it up.) So fuses blow when the toaster and a precarious combination of lights, computers, radios, whatever are on.

Fine.

What’s awful is having to venture down to the first floor and face the ancient landlady or her husband. She invariably comes to the door in a muumuu. A really worn one. And she demands to know the combination of electronics I used to create this outage. Then she acts disgusted at my idiocy. How could I possibly have the TV and the toaster on at once? I have to tell her there’s an outage so she can venture into the locked basement to replace the fuse. Because why would I be allowed to do it myself? Of course not. Because then I would have to face the frightening things down there. I'd have to face the birds.

“My son-in-law keeps them,” muumuu landlady once told me when I questioned the chirps I heard coming from down there. (No, not “down there.”)

I’m sure I’ve mentioned the birds here before.

Really, someday I’ll spill all the freakishness of my freaky old building and its freaky (some old) inhabitants. It’s very Hitchcockian. And Hunter S. Thompsonian.

Witness, Dickensian:

One time, the Con Ed guy was in my kitchen. We were chatting. He told me, “Be careful with open flames in this place.”

“Excuse me?”

“You guys still have the hook up for gas lamps in the ceiling,” he said.

Gas. Lamps.

Tamarindus

I’m reading a book about the Indian caste of untouchables, and (like “Aspirin”) it’s aptly named “Untouchables.”

Because of this book, I’ve been looking up the definition of foods like “jaggery” and “tamarind.”

Here’s part of the entry on tamarind from an online spice encyclopedia:

“In Victorian times, the British in Goa kept a tamarind in one ear when venturing into the native quarter to keep themselves free from harassment because the locals believed the fresh pods were inhabited by malevolent demons.”

Monday, December 19, 2005

Reading. Sharing. Definitely Not Talking

I have two articles that are some of the year’s best I want to recommend.

One, if you missed it, is Barry Bearak’s NYT Magazine article on six tsunami victims. I thought about a way to link to it, but I can’t say I’ve figured out how to get you to those 18,000 words, or however many thousand there are. But try to find it if you can.

Two, also in the Times, Kurt Eichenwald’s “Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World.” Because if there’s ever personal, rather than just public-service journalism to be done, it seems Eichenwald has mastered it. This boy lost his childhood to the world of online prostitution, and may have waded right out of it with the reporter’s urging.

On a side note, I’m reading an interesting history of the making of aspirin, aptly titled, “Aspirin.” You get medical and pharmaceutical and chemical history in one package. Pretty interesting.

And on a note off to the side of that, I have laryngitis, which is intriguing. I know my job requires reading and writing, but, really, not being able to speak is a whole different thing. Scary, a little. What if I could never report again? You know, get on a phone and convince someone to tell me things, because I want them to? It hits a nerve. Or silences one.

Please tell me your favorite readings. I’m seeking articles and fiction or non-fiction books that I shouldn’t miss this year. In a vaguely viral haze, I will try to think of others to share. Then again, I'm not promising a well of thoughts. The rope that lowers the bucket into the well is a little stuck right now.

Do it for me. I'd do it for you.

[Technorati tags: , ]

Friday, December 16, 2005

I Ate the Generic

Iatrogenic adj.
Used to describe a symptom or illness brought on unintentionally by something that a doctor does or says. (Microsoft Word definition.)

(Merriam-Webster:
iat·ro·gen·ic
Pronunciation: (")I-"a-tr&-'je-nik
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek iatros physician + English -genic
: induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures )

I can’t fall asleep or wake up these days without this word in my head.

Iatrogenic.

I knew each time that it had some kind of medical definition, although I’d also decided it had something to do with salt, and the kidneys.

Nyet.

So what it actually is…it intrigues me. Because it makes me wonder, what is a word for a life that can be described like this? For a life lived because symptoms are brought on unintentionally by something someone does or says? A scared life, a reactive life? Is there a real adjective instead of “reactive”? Like “iatrogenic”?

For levity, I give you background noise from my TV. Flava Flav says to Brigitte Neilson:

“I love every cactus in the desert about you…. If you was a slice of pizza, I wouldn’t even slice you. I would eat you whole.”

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

We Are the Narwhal

So narwhals aren’t unicorns. And it turns out their crazy-ass tusks are used for more than fighting. Or pointing.

It seems the tusks are covered in sensitive nerve endings, and are used to probe their environment. In the NYT article about the discovery, I really liked this paragraph:

“This tactile sense might explain why narwhals engage in what is known as "tusking," where two males gently rub tusks together, Dr. Nweeia said. He added that the Inuit seldom report aggressive contact, undermining ideas of ritualized battle.”

Yeah, they do it cause it feels good.

Enjoy the bizarre pic here, which accompanies the article. I am.

[Technorati tags: , ]

Monday, December 12, 2005

Ratastic! Get This Rat to the Rat Olympics!

I saw something tonight I’ve never seen before in a lifetime in New York:

A rat, diving vertically into a crack in the middle of a sidewalk.

It walks, it stops, it dives.

Nose, torso, rat ass, tail to follow.

Scurry, scurry, scurry.

Gone.

“I will more share with others more fortunate than myself.”

The “Miss World” contest is on. To set the stage for you all, I will explain what I saw a few minutes ago when the camera panned the auditorium:

A fat man in an oversized orange shirt sprawled across two chairs.

The “auditorium” seems to be a slightly larger-than-normal room with a pseudo balcony, and there are many, many bored looking folk with their arms sprawled over empty chairs.

But, of course, the real entertainment is on the stage, where some blank-faced, square-jawed Brit asks all the foreign women what they will do with the year if they are crowned “Miss World.”

For instance, there was this attempt at an answer from a twitching “Miss Korea,” who had just won the “Beauty with a Purpose” award for her work in nursing homes:

“I will more share with others more fortunate than myself.”

Smiles and nods! Smiles and nods!

Earlier, Miss Russia asked for a translator to help her with her answer. She answered and paused (in Russian) in the middle, looked kind of spacey…so the Man with the Microphone smiled and nodded as if she were done. Audience applause up! Oh, but there was more blather so Mr. Man with the Microphone had to swallow his smile while the translator said something about children not having homes. Sh, audience. Sh.

I will leave you with this final image:

In the talent competition, Miss Italy won for “Unique Act.” Her Unique Act? Dancing. On roller skates.

Have a great day everyone! Smiles and nods! Smiles and nods!

[Technorati tags: ]

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Snaerk

In the grand tradition of middle-school taunts, one reporter just yelled out to another, for no real reason:

“Hey, Tom—do you still call 900-numbers and ask them to play D&D with you?”

[snaerk.]

Because so-called “Tom” made a complete ass out of himself (to me) at our recent holiday party, I think this is the funniest thing I’ve heard in days. How many times can a coworker ask you to come home with him and “make a sandwich” before you punch him?

How many?
No, really.
How many?

[And now for an extra-added bonus link, provided by the snarktastic reporter quoted above: "The bigger the testicles, the smaller the brain." Enjoie.]

[Technorati tags: , ]

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Wisdom for the Ages

"My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought, careening through a cosmic vapor of invention."

Blazing Saddle, 1974

So now I add some schmalz I just reread in an old journal. When I lived in Venice, I knew the guy who lived in Ezra Pound’s house. Here’s what I wrote:

“Cedric [pseudonym] lives in Ezra Pound’s house. Three floors. All worn wood and white paint. In the attic are paintings by T---- and a Rauchenberg. Cedric hung the Rauchenberg. In the entranceway, so if you look immediately right in the narrow hall, it is right there, otherwise you’d miss it. Nearly in his lease, but in the end, just in a verbal agreement, Cedric promised Pound’s daughter that he would maintain the grave on San Michele. In the rest of the house hang geometric brown and orange paintings of laced windows, in-your-basement-‘70s-style-you-forgot-they-were-there and other grandma-y things, all by Cedric. F. once asked him if his color scheme had been affected by living in Venice. With a blank stare, he replied, “No.”

This man has a pale, spotty face and duck feet. I asked him if he had yet attended to Pound’s grave, and with a loud [fill in nationality] accent, he guffawed, “No.” And then: “His daughter came to Venice a month ago and I’m sure she went there.”

So now we know a man is neglecting Ezra Pound’s grave.”

The next page in the journal is a long quotation from The Colossus of Maroussi, by Henry Miller, which I remember crouching in a Barnes & Noble copying some years ago.

Here’s part of it:

“The mastery of great things comes with the doing of trifles; the little voyage is for the timid soul just as formidable as the big voyage for the great one. Voyages are accomplished inwardly, and the most hazardous ones, needless to say, are made without moving from the spot. But the sense of voyage can wither and die. There are adventurers who penetrate to the remotest parts of the earth, dragging to a fruitless goal an animated corpse.”

Etc.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Scansion. Ubi?

Spinny roundy spondee.
Scanner.
The poems.
The books full of. Full of it all.
The dactyl the pterodactyl.
Scan it.

Electronic things blink and close.
Open and close.
Tire and wake.
Iamb.
Iamb.
Iamb.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Free Metaphor, 10% Off

Picture yourself, a human being, with your arms pulled around your torso as if they were in a straitjacket. You're in a room 2 feet by 2 feet, and you start to move. List one way, and all you do is hit up against a wall, which makes you fall back, which makes you hit the next wall. Pretty soon you're bouncing from one to the next until you are in a distorted figure-8 motion you are powerless to stop.

After a while, all the bouncing is your only entertainment, so you learn to enjoy it, sometimes.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Newsroom Smackdown

If you ever wanted to understand the distinction between editors and reporters, here you go:

A couple of minutes ago, I was negotiating with an editor on a headline. I was feeling a little tabloidy, so I asked him to take the “g” off the end of the word “hanging.” You know, so it would read: “hangin’”.

“It’s a little 'New York Posty,' I know,” I told him. “Can we do that?”

Ever snappy, the editor replied: “It’s our world and we create it.”

Then, in the jaunty parlance of our daily newsroom, a reporter offered: “I’m a constant victim of circumstance, myself.”

[Technorati tags: , ]

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Jades

I’m on the way home on the train tonight, talking to a guy colleague about parasites, misogynists and other colleagues.

A seemingly homeless man walks by with an armful of “The Onion,” possibly trying to sell the free paper, which makes us laugh in a terribly mean way. (Less at the man, more at the idea. I really think that’s true.)

Just as he squeezes by us, he launches into a primal kind of screaming. At first, I think it is a very distorted version of “Help me! Heeeelp meeee!” But as the train falls silent, I realize it is truly just gibberish.

My colleague, without skipping a beat, and with the honest mindset of an ever-absorbing reporter, marvels:

“I love his unorthodox screaming style.”

This strikes me as the funniest response to a very strange and awful situation I have ever heard. The screaming man gets off at the next stop, and my colleague and I laugh for the rest of our ride to Brooklyn.

[Technorati tags: , ]

She Just Wanted to See the World

Poor Emily the small, scared cat.

Here’s what happened, clipped from the AP:

“Emily vanished from her [Wisconsin] home in late September. She apparently wandered into a nearby paper company's distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales.

The container went by truck to Chicago and by ship to Belgium before the cat was found Oct. 24 at Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France. Emily, who turned 1 year old that very day, was thin and thirsty but still alive.

Workers at Raflatac used her tags to phone her veterinarian in Wisconsin, and the vet called her owners.

Emily faced one last packed day of travel before her homecoming. She was due to arrive in Newark, N.J., later Thursday, board a connecting flight to Chicago, and then be driven home to Wisconsin, Fleury said.”

It was her goddamned birthday, after all.

[Technorati tags: , ]

Links