Echopraxia

Heute nicht auf Deutsch. I am slowly plowing through William Vollmann's latest characteristically terrifying novel, though, the action of which is split more or less evenly between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia in an attempt to demonstrate that they were both really depressing.

I was afraid that Vollmann ran out of tricks about ten years ago, but (happily) he seems to have entered some kind of career renaissance, one in which he no longer feels compelled to write quite so many gigantic books about whores. Meanwhile, professional reviewers of novels seem to have come to terms with the fact that no matter what they say, basically nobody is going to read him, which gives them license to throw their hands up and start saying things like:

I've reviewed nearly all of Vollmann's books over the years and am running out of superlatives...

Posted by zerlesen at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The always-engaging Grover Norquist does some community outreach at the American Prospect. While finessing his positions on immigration (essentially "I would like to punch Tom Tancredo in the face.") and gay marriage, he comes up with this inspiring anecdote:

I think it's a mistake to write off any group. I was in Romania, they're having elections in four weeks, and I was organizing the non-communists. And I had them write on a blackboard Who's Voting for Us, Who's Voting for Them. And they had to list ... understand why everybody was. They had the gypsies voting for the communists, and I said, "OK, I get why the Communists are voting for the Communists, and the Army and the police and the guys with government jobs, but why the gypsies?" If I were a gypsy I'd want to live outside touchy-feely U.S. law, much less harsher communist law. And they said, "Well, the communists buy them liquor and then they vote for them." And I said, "We can do this; George Washington did this, it's OK." And they said, "No, the gypsies are scum and we won't talk to them." And I said, "OK, I guess you're not getting the gypsy vote then."

Posted by zerlesen at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Brandon will presumably not be terribly excited about this, but he has no soul. Me, I'm frantically shopping around for digital cable channels that might be dealing with HBO, and upgrading my internet connection for the entire days' downloading that will have to ensue in their absence.

Posted by zerlesen at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Holy shit. I've been to some shows in my time; enough shows that I dread going to shows. (I don't use the word "dread" lightly: these days, I proactively find reasons not to be where live music is played. I can see an older, balder version of me avoiding cinemas in ten years' time, for similar reasons - and if I had to continually war with assholes over standing room in movie theaters, it'd be happening already. Yes, I'm aware that I'm sounding like Pat. Pass the vegan popcorn, motherfucker.)

But I still make it out every so often. And that, that was fucking awesome. Enough so to make me wonder if it was in my top three all-time, and to wonder if that notion even made any sense, and then to wonder if I should just cue up some tunes and drift off to sleep in relatively-dignified silence and finish this post when I'm sober.

Actually, that's a thought. I'll just come back and edit the hell out of this in the morning. Who's going to know?

Posted by zerlesen at 2:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)