Wired Mesh

Readings: Misogyny

"When a man conclusively exalts one woman, and one woman only, 'above all others,' you can be pretty sure you are dealing with a misogynist. It frees him up for thinking the rest are shit."

—Martin Amis, House of Meetings

Writings: Top Ten Movies of 2006

My top ten list is published in the new edition of the Willamette Week.

The short version: 2006, a crap year for movies.

The long version: Here.

The Way We Live Now

What follows is likely to be of interest to about nine people. But seeing as those nine people constitute the entire readership of this blog, this could be my most popular post yet: Yes, it's time for photos of Portland.

Click on the shot at right for a guided tour of my home, work and assorted Puddletown hangouts. Please keep in mind that my neighborhood does not typically look like this. Typically, it looks very dark: Sunset arrives at 4:30 every afternoon.

Readings: Westernism

"My ghost expects censure. But make it personal, Venus; make it your own and not the censure of your group and ideology. Yes, you heard me, young lady: your ideology. Oh, it's a mild ideology, I agree (mildness is its one idea). Nobody's going to blow themselves to bits for it.

"...Your crowd, they're so terrorstricken by generalisations that they can't even manage a declarative sentence. 'I went to the store? To buy orange juice?' That's right, keep it tentative — even though it's already happened. Similarly, you say 'okay' when an older hand would say (if anything) 'I see' or 'Oh really'. 'My name is Pete?' 'Okay.' 'I was born in Ohio?' 'Okay.' What you're saying, with your okays, is this: for the time being I take no exception. You have not affronted me yet. No one has been humiliated so far.

"A generalisation might sound like an attempt to stereotype — and we can't have that. I'm at the other end. I worship generalisations. And the more sweeping the better. I am ready to kill for sweeping generalisations.

"The name of your ideology, in case anyone asks, is Westernism. It would be no use to you here."

—Martin Amis, House of Meetings

Readings: Merry Christmas

"All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death."

—T. S. Eliot, "The Journey of the Magi"