Taking The Cake

 

 

 

We've Fifi and Fafa in residence since Mak Ndak took the girls to go jalan jalan yesterday, Fifi having now completed her 'O' levels. Today they baked a cake together, for one of Fifi's friends. It was pink. Very. Evidence above.

Staunch Conservatism

I didn't wear a tie to work today. My new look elicited alarmed reactions from three colleagues, one of whom commented that I looked naked. Fear not. I have no desire to perturb the populace. It will be business as usual next week.

(Oddly it was only the ladies who commented. I suspect guys don't notice these things. I certainly don't - with regard to others, I mean.)

Hard Listening

It's hard to watch others struggle and know they're never really going to listen to you. It's hard to know that the best you can do is listen to them, and nothing more than that. But it's sometimes - too often - necessary.

Slightly Foxed

Entertained myself in the early evening watching Fox News attempting to rationalise the Obama victory. Sample: a guy who seems to act as some kind of news anchor stating that after waging four years of class warfare (sic) the President should reach across the aisles to his rivals by abandoning all his policies and adopting those of the Republicans. Or, rather, those Republicans who identify themselves as belonging to some odd entity known as the Tea Party.

But isn't the President's victory evidence that the majority of Americans accept his policies as generally pretty reasonable - despite four years of unabashed bad-mouthing by the likes of Fox News and their ilk? So wouldn't it be incumbent on Fox News to do some reaching out to him, perhaps by attempting some form of mild neutrality or balance in their coverage?

And why is everyone on Fox always angrily outraged at the state of America when they are earning so much money? Although I suppose this explains why when they are not angry they manage to laugh so exaggeratedly at each other's bad jokes.

More Hard Going

I'm also finding My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me; Forty New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer heavy going, and I seem to have been reading it forever. So far each of the stories I've read (a grand total of twenty-six so far) has proved to have its distinct challenges. Most have been rewarding, but in an exhausting way - exhausting, that is, for this tired old brain.

There's a very strong sense of the writers involved really writing; i.e., showing their writing chops, which are generally plentiful. There are a lot of clever people around but you don't necessarily want to meet them all the time. Well, not me, anyway. (Which leads to the very interesting question as to why one wilfully, gleefully surrenders to certain demandingly obscure writers, but not others.)

But having said all that, I'm fairly sure I'll be browsing through the collection again, once completed, in search of the definite gems in there - and most of the big names are still to come: Joyce Carol Oates, Updike, Gaiman.

Hard Going

I'm finding The War of the World a tough read. Not because it's particularly difficult. In fact, it's all too easy to follow. But that's the problem. A history of human stupidity and cruelty, as I suppose all history must be, wears you down such that eventually it starts to feel more of a duty than a pleasure to read it.

The material on the Bolsheviks is particularly depressing, especially the ease with which supposedly intelligent types from the West were duped as to the nature of the regime. What was Bernard Shaw thinking of?

More Guests

No sooner had I posted yesterday's rather funky guest list than I realised I'd made at least two startling omissions. Which means I'm going to have to increase the numbers, not to twelve, a number I don't care for, but fifteen, which is curiously satisfying.

The first missing person that came to mind was Chekov. I'd sort of run down the list of Russian novelists, briefly considered Dostoevsky, simply for his capacity to cause an entertaining scandal, then decided it was safer to stick with writers who were basically sane, and completely forgot the dramatists. Chekov always strikes me as a nice guy (have no idea why) and with two notable hypochondriacs at the table - I'm thinking of those princes of Modernism, Proust & Joyce - we need a doctor at hand.

Then I suddenly remembered Coleridge. Not sure how I overlooked this master of table talk - and, by the way, he came to mind long before I read young Daryl's uncannily canny suggestion/comment to be found in yesterday's comments. (I'm completely dismissing Trebuchet's characteristically mind-bending surfacing of Velikovsky on similar grounds to my stand against Dostoevsky - can't really deal with loonies at the dining table.)

But if you're going to invite Coleridge how can you leave out his eighteenth century equivalent, the Great Cham himself, old Sam Johnson? The question now, of course, is whether anyone else will get a word in edgeways.

Which is why I'm happy to invite the laconic Kurt Vonnegut to table. I feel a bit guilty actually over my critical comments regarding our (former) colonial cousins, and remembering just how excited I was to realise that the major early novels are now available in two fine volumes from the Library of America it seemed churlish to leave out one of my teenage idols.

And, finally, it occurred to me that having invited a fair number of folks who are somewhat challenged on the glamour-front (pity anyone opposite Johnson) I needed someone very easy on the eye as well as being able to offer intelligently fresh perspectives. Ms Chimamanda Adichie more than fits the bill on that front - so that's my fifteen, and enough of this for now.

Welcome Guests

Recently I learned how to check various statistics regarding those who drop into this Far Place. Nothing terribly enlightening, except I doubt that any major corporations are likely to come knocking on my virtual doors asking for advertising space any time soon. But since I wouldn't give it them, this is not exactly an issue.

However, there is one rather odd discovery I've made. It seems that, a bit of a squib I wrote back in April 2011 has attracted more readers than any other post, bar one. (When I tell you the numbers went up from the usual average by a factor of well over a thousand per cent you'll understand just how anomalous the number appears.)

At first I wondered whether it was the sheer wit and joie de vivre of the post that had made it go mildly viral. Then it occurred to me that the fact it mentions the names of 10 Writers You Really Wouldn't Want To Invite For Dinner - and in the process of hacking out this little list a few other notable literati get a quick mention - may have inadvertently attracted a substantial number of folk surfing the net in search of useful information on one or more of these notables. How disappointed they must have been to end up here.

And it is with that in mind that I now offer to the world this utterly inessential list of the 10 Writers To Get Around Your Dinner Table To Guarantee A Memorable Evening.

Even back in the April of last year the Hierophant made the excellent suggestion of Montaigne, and I had duly conceded him a place, along with the automatic choice of James Joyce. So that's my two for the heads of the table. I'm also going with the Hierophant's suggestion of Ruskin, though this is purely on trust (but Wilde, no, far too great a risk, and Irish, and we've already got one Irishman in place. Also I can't resist Sam Beckett, just for the jokes, so my ancestors' nation is more than well represented as it is.)

We'll need at least a couple of ladies to keep things civilised, and who might be more civilised than Jane Austen? Then we'll need Margaret Atwood if they feel the need to get less lady-like, and to represent the Americas. (I'm not accepting anyone from the States as they're all drinkers and this is a strictly alcohol free occasion. And if Joyce finds that tough he'll just have to show a bit of self control for once.)

Proust is in, of course, just for his exquisitely good manners, and to chat about his health with Joyce. And the final three are R.K. Narayan (partly to pay him back for once giving me extremely gracious permission to adapt some of his short stories for a school play, and partly because he was obviously a lovely man in every way); P.G. Wodehouse (ditto on the loveliness front); and John Keats, because we need a poet, and I'd like to see him flirt with Jane.

And I know this is exceeding the given number, but I don't see how we can get along without the eventual Mrs Joyce. Anyway she's not a writer, so in that sense she's not adding to the number, but she's someone of great wit and wisdom and that's always worth having around the table. I reckon my Missus would get on with her like a house on fire.

Straight From From The Cat's Mouth

A brilliant Get Fuzzy today from Darby Conley. Bucky Katt asks the oddball cat from England (I think his name is Mac): Is there any good horror on tv in England? - and gets the eerily accurate reply: Uhhh... Liverpool F.C. Hah!

Don't blame me, Scousers, the cat said it.

More Sloganising

Most cheerful sight of the day, spotted in the supermarket across the road, a little nipper in a pink t-shirt announcing Yes, actually, The world does revolve around ME! Worth a chuckle or two, methinks.

Oh, and I suddenly realised that I'd unaccountably forgotten to make reference to that most potent of all rock'n'roll sloganisers, Mr Robert Zimmerman. My favourite by a country mile: DON'T FOLLOW LEADERS / WATCH YER PARKIN' METERS - which doesn't work half so well if you only quote the first line.

And a final addendum - I've had occasion over the last day or two to remind some of my students of those big friendly letters on the side of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy embodying the most useful single piece of advice you're likely to find anywhere in this small part of the universe: DON'T PANIC.