Echopraxia

Previous post heading is meta, but not purely so - crickets - or locusts, or something with an exoskeleton - are massing in the trees, making an insurrectionary noise like a few thousand tiny buzzsaws. I keep expecting to hear falling timber.

So, then: after much pain and many deaths, I am back in the US. Elvis Costello once wrote an entire song about how much the city I'm sitting in sucks, but that's neither here nor there. Nothing is moving on the street except for the great North American flannel-shirted cicada, or whatever the hell those things are.

Posted by zerlesen at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Not dead, but only sleeping late. Last weekend was spent on a small island in... not the harbour, probably, but some large body of water in the vicinity of Sydney. One of the large bodies of water. Not one of the ones with "ocean" in the name, though, I don't think.

Having to make statements like that makes me uncomfortably aware how little I know about what I'm talking about. So, I turn to the last refuge of the clueless to learn that this island is apparently located in Pittwater, and that

There are no shops or industrial zones which means that it is not a very busy community. But it was not always like that, a hundred years ago salt was extracted from seawater near what is now known as Tennis wharf. Using an oil burner about 90kg were extracted a week.

Anyway, it was intimidatingly gorgeous. I scraped my foot up fairly well attempting to climb a buoy in the middle of (what I suppose must have been) Pittwater, but so far have not observed any coral formations sprouting out of my ankle. This is especially good news in light of the fact that I don't have health insurance. Which reminds me: all sorts of other unpleasant real-world issues have been threatening to intrude, as well - but so long as I can still drink rum and read A.J. Liebling on a small island somewhere, they can always be put off for another day.

Posted by zerlesen at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I think I'll let that last one stand, if for no other reason than that I'm in no clearer a state of mind right now than I was then. I do have some half-formed thoughts about singers, and vocalists, and the way that an otherwise not terribly prepossessing man (who, now that he's grown his hair out a bit, bears an unsettling resemblance to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban) can deliver a line in a way that just commands the attention of a room, whereas the fellow from Coldplay still, for all his yammering, doesn't really seem like he's trying very hard - but now is not the time.

Besides, I should shut up about the Mountain Goats for a while. To help me with that, I was just out cleansing my musical palate at a club, out there on the mean streets where the young people congregate with their challenging slang. We were entertained by a popular local beat combo, whose frontman was immortalized in the South Park spoof "Fightin' All Over The World."

This was about as strange as you'd expect. A review, of sorts, will follow when I'm sober. This should be tomorrow, although I can't discount the possibility that William Vollmann or Dennis Farina or someone will turn out to have an experimental oompah band playing in the neighborhood, in which case I'll probably feel obliged to go and get hammered at that as well.

Posted by zerlesen at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reading about Sho's journey through San Francisco is a major nostalgia trip for me, as he has obligingly hit some of my favorite spots - places like the Pork Store, Hobson's Choice, and most of all the Black Horse London Pub & Deli in Cow Hollow.

I happened upon the place in the summer of 1999. It's not easy to happen upon, but at the time they had a big Union Jack protruding out into Union Street, and that was unusual enough for me to stop in. (Admittedly, it doesn't take a huge amount to make me curious enough to stop in at a new bar.) The bartender - also the proprietor - stood to attention and said "Welcome home." And home was what it felt like, for the next six hours, after which time it felt more like a fuzzy, soft-focussed, gently yawing and pitching version of home. Then I fell over.

The Black Horse is the kind of place where, if you don't know anyone, the bartender will introduce you to the rest of the patrons. This is not a process that takes very long. There's seating room for about seven, and standing room for about zero. There's a keg behind the bar in a bathtub, a couple of bottled ale options, a totally impractical dartboard. You can order a cheese plate, and you used to be able to buy cigars. You can leave a conversation and pick it back up six months later the next time you're in the city. The last time I was there I had, through a series of logistical mistakes, no place to stay, and ended up with more offers of a place to crash than I knew what to do with. I'm not sure if they even need the business - I'm not exaggerating; the entire establishment could fit behind the bar of my current local - but, for what it's worth, if you're ever in the neighborhood, this is as close as I've seen to the Platonic ideal of a bar. And they don't even serve spirits.

Posted by zerlesen at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Oh, my aching head. Imagine me saying that yesterday, when I wasn't really capable of posting, or of leaving the house. Anyway, thanks for the well-wishes. A good time was had, and when it became necessary, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bartender who was perfectly aware of what Flatliners were and how to make them. This has happened to me, I think, twice ever. Here's the recipe:

Pour a measure of sambuca into a large shot glass, then layer a measure of tequila over it. (I use the back of a spoon to do this, because I'm not very good at fancy pouring techniques.) Then add Tabasco sauce. If you've done this correctly, the Tabasco will sink through the tequila and settle on top of the sambuca, giving you a perfectly clear drink with a thin red line in the middle of it.

This sounds awful, I'm aware, but everyone I have inflicted them on is surprised by how smooth a drink this is. First, that acquired tequila taste is completely wiped away by the Tabasco scouring your tastebuds, then the fiery unpleasantness of the Tabasco is mitigated by the sambuca - which itself tastes much less sickly than usual, since the sweetness is actually being used to offset something. It's all over very quickly, and you're left with a faint nutty aftertaste and the sensation that something - something momentous - has just occurred. It's a perfect fusion of ingredients, and I'd go on except that writing about liquor is making me feel slightly unwell.

UPDATE: It hardly needs to be said, but it is very important that you drink this in one go. Under no circumstances should it be sipped.

Posted by zerlesen at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was going to start rambling about Situationism, but life's too short. Speaking of which, I'm all older and stuff. This post is still fairly representative, I think. Different continent, different sedan chair, different watering-hole, different oracular pronouncements - but the song remains the same.

(Any of you who happen to be in an appropriate place to do so, have a Flaming Blue Dolphin on me. Well, not "on me" in the sense that I'm going to pay for them - just that I'm providing a viable excuse.)

Posted by zerlesen at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Sydney, Australia. Before that, an undisclosed location in the US. (Undisclosed not because I was doing anything exciting and classified, but because some friends are even more serious about not being identifiable through their blogs.) Before that, a couple of spots in England.

Moving around a lot does have many things to recommend it, but there has been some serious damage done to my accent. I don't even know what I sound like anymore; last Friday someone asked if I was Irish.

Posted by zerlesen at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Most people who actually read this are doing so because they know me personally, and the rest of you could probably figure it out without too much effort, so posting anonymously seems like it might be a waste of time. However, I'm still in that tricky pre-tenure stage of academia, a professional adolescence that can easily last until your early forties, so blogging anonymously is a precaution as well as an affectation. It's mostly an affectation, because I'm not planning to seriously violate any codes of professional ethics here, but still.

This is not supposed to be representative of my day job, especially when I'm writing it during the day. As the needlepoint sampler that hung in my old office put it: Don't say "cunt" in front of your students.

Posted by zerlesen at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)