Via Mindless Blather, we learn that someone has spilled the beans about the Portland magical unicorn entitlement.  Which does not exist, of course.

Last night I finished reading J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.  In the last few paragraphs I kept repeating “My God, my God” over and over.  I won’t ruin the ending, but suffice to say that I can’t keep it out of my mind this morning.  Devastating stuff, and it’s making for a blue day. 

Similar effects, I recall, have come from books such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, D.M. Thomas’ The White Hotel, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, among others. 

With books like these you wonder why you read at all, if it’s going to hurt you so much. You think the author is awfully bold to bring forth such pain, and you squint at the balance between true emotion and bathetic manipulation. 

Now I suppose I should go read something twee and anodyne.

I want to emphasize to you that AT NO TIME while I lived in Austria did I keep anybody in a secret room underground, nor was I ever kept in a secret room underground, nor did I ever know anybody who lived in a secret room underground.

On the other hand, one of my favorite places to visit during summers was the Seegrotte; a wonderful place to escape from the heat.  That warplanes were built and stored down there during the war added perhaps a slight frisson to the underground chill.  Of course one won’t find mention at the website, nor in my memory is it acknowledged at the place itself, that these great technological advances (“2000 workers were employed here to produce one of the first jetfighters of the world, the “Heinkel HE 162 Salamander””) were accomplished with the use of slave labor from the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Weezer’s new album is out 6/24.  And, oh my, what’s up with that cowboy hat?

In other music news, for some reason I’ve been in a mood to listen to Terence Trent D’Arby today.  TTD is the poor man’s Prince.  I’ve never much cared for Prince.

I’ve been reading through  John Updike’s collected early short stories.   From “Snowing in Greenwich Village”, we have this passage:

In the Black Sabbath song “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, there is a moment towards the middle of the song, after the second jazzy acoustic interlude and leading up to the solo, where Ozzy shouts “You bastards!”.  Just that snippet would make a great cell phone ringtone.  I’m not going to go looking for one; I don’t need that kind of validation of my ideas.  I will just live my life knowing that this is the kind of world where such miracles are more certain than possible.

When Gorgeous George Galloway appeared before the Senate way back when, even some of those who thought he was lying through his oil-smeared pie-hole could admire his artful use of parliamentary rhetoric.  In a similar vein, I present an official defending his government’s policy with an élan that Condoleeza Rice was unable to summon when confronted by the witless Barbara Boxer.  Here’s French Prime Minister François Fillon:

“Avant d’être tournée contre mon gouvernement, cette motion de censure est tournée contre ceux qui décidèrent avec courage et lucidité d’engager la France dans un processus certes difficile, mais juste”, a-t-il souligné, alors que la décision d’intervenir en Afghanistan avait été prise en 2001 par Jacques Chirac et son Premier ministre socialiste Lionel Jospin. […] Le retrait, ce serait la défaite. (…) En somme, nous laisserions à nos alliés le soin de régler l’affaire, laissant ainsi entendre que leur victoire ou celle d’al-Qaïda et des Talibans ne nous empêcherait pas de dormir”, a-t-il dit. […]  L’opposition nous accuse d”atlantisme’, façon aimable de nous présenter à la solde de George Bush. Chacun l’aura compris, il s’agit pour eux de surfer sur l’un de nos travers les plus discutables : l’anti-américanisme primaire”, a-t-il dit.

Perhaps it all reads better in French but would sound quotidian in English.  More likely it represents a real advantage that comes from having Cabinet-equivalent officials who have to survive equally in the rowdy world of parliamentary politics as well as their bureaucracies.  That class of our officialdom might be dominated by too many academics and lawyers to allow for such facility with extemporaneousness.

Speaking of officialdom, Barack Obama has confirmed that I have as much or more foreign policy experience as does he.  I always knew I was presidential caliber:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/us/politics/10obama.html?ref=us

I like this quote from McCain’s spokesthing: 

“Oh, and as Senator Obama may know, [McCain] has actually spent some time living abroad as well.”

It’s felt lately as if we’ve been stuck in a late-winter fugue state.  We the people anticipate warmer days, or at least warmer rains, and yet we are chilled and our limbs are weary of cursing the gods.  Perhaps it is the early onset of Daylight Savings Time this year we will blame.  Such falsely stretched afternoons so soon have roused joys in our sap while the cold on our skin confounded those expectations and our brains, deep down in the lattice where we are so quick to assume dire consequences, have been whispering into our daydreams that the death of the year will last forever this time.  The addition of snowfall at the beginning of last week was so risibly provocative that the weakest among us did no more than groan and check the linings of their winter coats.

Perhaps the tilting over of the planet has now taken hold and been accepted.  At the end of last week we had several days of sun, though overcast and a cold rain have returned. Nevertheless, the dogs and I on our walk yesterday evening have discovered the true evidence of the turning of the season.  Yes, we have found The First Dead Robin of Spring.

Boris and Vinnie have not yet shown much inclination to the molestation of the carcasses we occasionally encounter on our walks.  Boris is more intested in live prey, like the cat he got his jaws around the other day.  The cat was only in the grip for a moment, and so survived uninjured, but this further reinforces my belief that house cats should remain inside the house and not outside, where they must surely die.  Vinnie prefers to bark at other dogs, old ladies, large intimidating men, crows, bicyclists, motorcyclists, skateboarders, scooterists, and commies.  He is also on the alert for stray tennis balls, which besides the hygiene factor also makes me worried that he will become a victim of anti-dog terrorism.  I pull him away from such discoveries now, another way in which each day we break our dogs’ hearts just that little bit more.

Last night I went to a party where some half of those in attendance had all gone to high school together in Tillamook; indeed some had known each other going back to kindergarten.  I can’t even remember the names of anyone I went to kindergarten with (though I remember one teacher: Mrs. Romero) much less am I in touch with any of them.  I’m not even in regular contact with anyone I went to high school with, those that’s largely due to my own lack of effort.  At any rate, herewith is the list of my primary and secondary educational institutions:

Nursery School: name forgotten, Arlington, Virginia

Kindergarten: The American School of Madrid/King’s College, Madrid, Spain

1^st Grade: Jamestown Elementary, Arlington, Virginia

2^nd Grade:            “

3^rd Grade:            “            /The American International School of Vienna, Austria

4^th Grade:                                                            “

5^th Grade:                                                            “

6^th Grade: Fox Lane Middle School, Bedford, New York

7^th Grade: International School of Geneva, Switzerland

8^th Grade:             “

9^th Grade:            “

10^th Grade:            “

11^th Grade: The American School of the Hague, the Netherlands

12^th Grade:            “

 I sometimes feel jealous of those still in touch with their childhood circumstances.  I am comparatively deracinated. 

Off the top of my  head I can’t recall if I ever saw any of Richard Widmark’s films, and don’t feel like checking at IMDB.  However, anyone like this deserves applause:

In reality, the screen’s most vicious psychopath was a mild-mannered former teacher who had married his college sweetheart, the actress Jean Hazelwood, and who told a reporter 48 years later that he had never been unfaithful and had never even flirted with women because, he said, “I happen to like my wife a lot.”

I happen to like my wife a lot, too.

It’s also true that marriage requires one to ensure one’s spouse never is afflicted with “Kitchen Sponge” Syndrome.