Once I finally give a damn about the blog again, the computer decided to die. It’s now rebuilt, but still temperamental, with some conflicting drivers driving it to suicide, but it can probably be talked down. If OQ goes quiet again, it’s likely technical difficulties again or a currently unscheduled move to the new house, rather than a fit of crippling ennui.
Why not crash his party? He has some excellent links and images over there. I messed around with Tumblr months ago, but couldn’t get my act together there either.
I’m going to smack him for not mentioning Can Xue to me, as he connects her to Kafka and Schulz, while saying she doesn’t truly write like either. That sounds pretty damned good to me! It’s my own fault though, because as soon as i ran some searches, she turned up in a relatively recent Quarterly Conversation review. There is also a mammoth post over on a seemingly inactive blog This Hungry Owl.
I’ve not been reading much at all in recent months. It’s been bad enough that we’ve let the blog lay fallow, but then both school and work got weird, so reading and writing altogether halted.
The stacks around the house that I’ve been slowly picking at are two books by Raymond Roussel, the new Simon Critchley, and Arreola’s Confabulario, plus about half of what i was reading in August last year.
Pathetic. On the bright side, I started and finished quite a number of things in that time, but it’s still frustrating to see those books lingering around, half-read. Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind revealed itself hidden between some other books stowed away, and I’ve already read most of it this morning. That needs to be wrapped up today before Varamo can be bought.
The Wu Ming Foundation has a blog, and on it they post an interview with the real Luther Blissett.
Previous post on these guys here.
…Lacking only murderous and derisive comments by Kinski.
The blog is finally upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and I remembered to fix the author ID problem. Unfortunately, all of the old posts by Bill, Stanislav, Collin, and others had their author IDs stripped when the database was rescued from the old host. With over 3,000 posts to sort through, it’s a problem that might not be resolved. Fortunately, their personalities are strong enough and interests peculiar enough to allow their posts to be recognized with minimal effort.
Dumping the sprawling mess that was Fighting Against Making the Pie Higher into the archives of Orbis Quintus is something i swore to do years ago, but when i get around to doing it, always balk. Why?
Entries like this:
9/22/00
Sheesh! After reading this post on the Online Journal, it looks almost impossible that the dork Dubya Bush is going to be elected. I’m extremely relieved, but in reading this article, I’m also disappointed, in the same way that every time that a hurricane makes it into the Gulf of Mexico, I start rooting for it to hit New Orleans, as there’s no way that New Orleans will ever stay above water with the force of a decent hurricane cruising up the mouth of the Mississippi River. I don’t want people to suffer, and in good moods, i love that city, but there’s a wild streak in me that revels in the possibility of maximum chaos. Imagine Dan Quayle as the President, and then imagine him having an uncontrollably foul mouth and a bad temper. Wouldn’t that be a gold mine for every comedian in the world? Of course, the nation might not survive it….
Kick me in the face. Don’t be gentle. I’ll get no joy from it.
Serpents licked my ears!
Despite Orbis Quintus being a blog that has no unifying theme, i felt like posting the local topics elsewhere for awhile. Breaking into fruitless tangents about how much my local newspaper pisses me off feels off-tone here. Now they’re going to be over on Bloody Tangipahoa.
I don’t think one person within a 100 radius of Hammond, Louisiana even reads Orbis Quintus, so announcing this is a little silly.
Television didn’t kill my brain. By-the-numbers malaise and a lingering summer cold have been the real problem. It’s still a major effort to focus on anything longer than a few minutes, and there is still a lot of drooling going on.
So yep… i’m caught up on Battlestar Galactica and nearly there on The Wire and Rome, but i have nothing to show for it. (Just dipped toe into Life on Mars and Deadwood is queued up next.) Immersing myself in all of the televised culture that i’ve skipped these past few years has not paid off quite as well as i have hoped. They’ve proven to be satisfying distractions, but i’d be bullshitting everyone to say that all of this passive watching has given me that much insight on current entertainment.
I’ll try to cough something up in the next few days, but my head’s still full of mulch.
Officially, i’ve completed more books in the past six months than i completed in all of last year. However, last year i was still reading a lot of stuff without bothering to complete them, especially in the short time that i was still working in the bookstore, reading stuff on breaks or overnight. Despite all of this free time, I’m not sure if i’ve technically read more than before, although it still seems likely.1
Omega Minor and Laura Warholic are at the post office waiting to be picked up. Both of these books were intimidating me with their length. That nagged at me so much that i overcompensated. Over the weekend, i tackled Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles ((Owned it for ten years, but i’ve procrastinated completing it that entire time)) and Gaddis’ The Recognitions.2
Masochist.