The Shaming of Israel

Despite being extremely busy at the moment, I couldn't let today's events pass without a brief comment. The so-called 'prisoner exchange' between Israel and Lebanon is, in fact, no such thing: the term 'prisoner exchange' implies some degree of reciprocity, prisoners exchanged for prisoners, whereas what has actually taken place today is the exchange of five Lebanese prisoners for the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and murdered during Hezbollah's illegal incursion into, and assault upon, sovereign Israeli territory in July 2006.

The images of Samir Kuntar, the most infamous of the five Lebanese prisoners released today, being welcomed as a hero in Beirut are more sickening and disheartening than I can possibly put into words. Indeed, these words - 'sickening' and 'disheartening' - really are inadequate, for they entirely fail to communicate the absolute rage and indignation filling not only my stomach, but the collective stomach of the entire Israeli nation. To briefly recap Kuntar's crime:

In 1979 Kuntar and his small band of PLF terrorists landed on the beach at Nahariya, a small coastal town in the north of Israel. After murdering a policeman, they proceeded to break into the home of an Israeli family, the Harans. Kuntar and another member of the group dragged the father of the family, 31-year-old Danny Haran, and four-year-old Einat, down to the beach. After shooting Danny in the back of the head at point blank range in front of his daughter - and after drowning Danny's body to ensure that he really was dead - Kuntar smashed Einat's head open with rocks, stamped on her body, and crushed her skull with the butt of his assault rifle. Meanwhile, the mother of the family, Smadar, hid in the house with her two-year-old daughter Yael. After throwing grenades into the house and starting a fire in the hope of flushing out Smadar and Yael, Yael began to whimper. Fearing that her cries would alert the terrorists, Smadar covered her mouth, in the process accidentally smothering and killing her daughter.

Kuntar never expressed any remorse for his crimes. He should have died in prison for his crimes. The idea of him living free and healthy in Lebanon - much less welcomed as a hero, a "resistance fighter returning from the prisons of the occupier", to quote Lebanese President Michel Suleiman (how long, one wonders, until Hezbollah and Syria conspire to have Suleiman murdered as they did Rafik Hariri? Statements like this will do nothing to save him from his inevitable fate) - is one that is, I'm sure, too much for many Israelis to bear.

Understandably, some people might be a little perplexed as to why Israel would agree to such a disproportionate exchange in the first place. Indeed, this is not the first time that Israel has acquiesced to such an exchange: in 2003 Israel released over 400 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli (drug dealer) who had been captured by Hezbollah and the corpses of three other Israels. Part of the answer is to be found in Jewish law, which requires that every possible effort must be made to bury Jewish bodies as intact as possible, i.e. with all of their body parts. Hence the uniquely Israeli figure of those Orthodox Jewish medics who, after a suicide bombing, scour the surrounding area looking for any limbs, digits, organs - in fact any body part at all, no matter how small - which have been scattered by the impact of the explosion, and then match them up to the relevant corpse, ready for burial.

For too long now Israel's enemies have taken advantage of this requirement, and Jewish law more generally. The Arabs launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in the full knowledge that - in fact, precisely because - the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including their military, were observing the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a day on which all eating and drinking is prohibited. If Israel attempted something similar during Ramadan, the world would be in uproar. Three years ago, Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service, a bit like MI5 in Britain) foiled a Hamas plot to infiltrate an Israeli army outpost (in Israel). Hamas intended to kidnap a number of soldiers in order to use them as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Knowing that they wouldn't be able to kidnap so many soldiers, the leaders of Hamas hit upon another idea: rather than kidnap the soldiers, they would instead kill them, decapitate them, and, after displaying their severed heads on television, hold them to ransom.

How long will Israel continue to be humiliated in this way? What happened to the policy of never negotiating with terrorists? Israel used to be the one country which actually stuck to that policy, recognising, correctly, that if they started to negotiate no Israeli would ever be safe anywhere in the world. And, indeed, this is the case today. Although quoting Yitzhak Rabin is one of those habits that Israel must learn to overcome, I think that it is worth recalling his maxim that Israel must fight for peace as if there were no terror, and fight terror as if there was no peace. There is cautious optimism that Israel and her enemies are, finally, making progress with the former. But this process cannot take place at the expense of the latter. Israel cannot allow itself to be humiliated in this way. There is a difference between making necessary concessions and sacrifices to attain a genuine peace with legitimate partners in the Arab world and capitulation. Israel must rediscover its backbone, its pride, its sense of fighting spirit. It must understand that the fight for peace ought to be carried out with an absolutely ruthless determination, but that the fight against those who would kidnap, torture, bomb, decapitate, and murder its citizens must be pursued with the same degree of ruthless vigour.

1776 And All That

Yesterday I experienced my first Fourth of July. It was really great, both as a day off spent with friends, and as a holiday. People seemed to be genuinely happy and excited to be celebrating Independence Day, although it might have something to be with the fact that, including me, four of the people I spent last night with were non-Americans for whom all of this was new.

A few days ago I went to Rucker Park, known locally as 'The Ruck'. Rucker Park is probably the most famous basketball/streetball court in the US, the breeding ground for dozens of NBA players including Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Dr. J, and Wilt Chamberlain. Two summers ago Kobe Bryant played a few games there, as did Keven Garnett. The Ruck has also just been the subject of a new documentary made by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. The game was fantastic, really entertaining and fun to watch, and there was also a very local feel to the place; one had the impression that everyone knew everyone else, and the MC/commentator was constantly interacting with the crowd.

155th is a pretty poor area, not to mention quite unsafe (although, as usual, everyone I spoke to was very friendly, and I didn't feel at all unsafe, in spite/because of being searched for weapons and drugs before entering the park) and I wondered how the people living here perceived or thought of July 4th. As my friend and I left the subway stop we were handed 'Anti-Fourth of July' leaflets, which didn't surprise me much. But what was surprising was the disdain with which the protesters were met by the vast majority of locals. It seemed like even here, in one of the most deprived areas of the city, July 4th meant something. Exactly what it meant wasn't clear; I can't imagine that it meant a holiday for most people in the area: those with jobs probably had to work, and for those without it's a moot point anyway. Maybe it was just apathy or tradition or the need to conform to social norms - Bourdieu's 'habitus' - which caused the reaction to the protesters, but I get the impression that, in spite of the disasters of the last eight years, Americans are generally proud to be American. Not academics, of course, but that's because academics don't actually like or support anything (tangible) and, besides, academia as a whole must maintain its position of being out of step with everyone and everything around it.

Yesterday's festivities began in the afternoon (the morning was spent reading/finishing The Dialectic of Enlightenment - as Adam and I observed whilst watching the fireworks, it is difficult - not to mention amusing - to imagine Adorno's reaction to all of this) when my friends and I went down to Battery Park to see a free Sonic Youth show. Despite being very overcast, the rain was brief and the big storm we feared never came to pass. Sonic Youth were excellent, closing their 90-minute set with Schizophrenia and, much to my glee, a brutal version of 100%. Realizing that we were all very hungry, we took the subway and went for that most quintessentially patriotic of American foods, Korean BBQ (at the hilariously-monikered KumGang BBQ), followed by Pinkberry. After a debate about our next move, we chose dancing over karaoke and, after bidding farewell to Frank and his friend Raul, took a cab to Alphabet City. As we were driving down 12th the fireworks suddenly began, so we all jumped out and went to find a good viewing spot. We ended up on 12th and Avenue C, the huge factory in front of us imbuing the whole scene with a paradoxically Soviet feel. The fireworks were spectacular and, even after Sonic Youth, incredibly loud. At one point, following a brief lull, two enormous fireworks went off like thunderclaps, causing every car alarm in a two block radius to suddenly wail into life, much to the amusement of everyone, even the police.

Following the fireworks, we headed off to find the bar/club I'd heard about. Unfortunately, I had failed to make a note of either a) the name of the place, or b) its actual address. Nor had I really made any kind of effort to memorise these pieces of information. So, unable to find it (it was actually on 3rd and C), we headed to a different bar. Because I was looking for the other place, I arrived a few minutes later than everyone else, at which point Mary promptly chucked her drink all over me, her, and the floor. After finding out that they didn't have any milk for a White Russian (a recurring problem...) and that the jukebox was broken, we left and went to a bar on Houston. Therein Mary, Adam, and I picked 26 songs on the jukebox (highlights included Sonic Youth's Teenage Riot, Adam's dissection of the lyrics to TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me, and the VU's Waiting for the Man. Also the misunderstanding between me and Mary regarding her query about the band X) before we all proceeded to get very thoroughly drunk. Then we headed back up to Morningside and, on walking into 1020, we ran straight into Frank and Raul. We left at about 3:30. I woke up this morning feeling shockingly grim but, happily, my usual equilibrium has quickly reasserted itself.

Now begins my movie marathon: Sword of Doom was, sadly, scrapped as a result of my hangover, but later today I'll be seeing Samurai Rebellion followed by Wall-E, and tomorrow it's Kurosawa's Kagemusha followed by La Regle du Jeu.

Other things I've done since last posting: went to see Sigur Ros at the MoMA; had my sister to stay for a very happy week; went to see Pearl Jam (twice!); went on the world's fastest and tallest (not to mention uncomfortable) rollercoaster; saw Kurosawa's 'High and Low' and Herzog's fantastic 'Encounters at the End of the World'; played a lot of basketball; babysat for Matt and Kendra; read.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Ante Up' - M.O.P. feat. Busta Rhymes; 'Discipline' - Nine Inch Nails; 'W.M.A.' - Pearl Jam; 'Dies Irae' - Verdi

Quotation of the Day: when I inexplicably and in all seriousness referred to the Capra-Stewart classic 'Mr Smith Goes To Washington' as 'Mr Chips Goes To Hollywood'.

The Present Age

I just read the following story on msn.co.uk:

"Virginia man loses nearly 80 pounds in 6 months by eating at McDonald's every day

A Virginia man lost about 80 pounds (36 kilograms) in six months by eating nearly every meal at McDonald's. Not Big Macs, french fries and chocolate shakes. Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce. Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds (126 kilograms) in December. The 5-foot-8 (1.7 meters) Coleson now weighs 199 pounds (90 kilograms) and his waist size has dropped from 50 inches (127 centimeters) to 36 inches (91 centimeters). The 42-year-old businessman from Quinton says he chose McDonald's because it's convenient.

Coleson says his goal is to get back to the 185 pounds (84 kilograms) he weighed when he married Tricia Summer ten years ago."

That, my friends, is some spectacular bullshit. It is a fact that McDonald's salads contain more fat than their burgers - all you need to do is check the nutritional information on their website. Which, because I apparently have nothing better to do with my time, I did.

A double cheeseburger contains 440 calories and 23 grams of fat. The exhaustively-named Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken contains (once you add the salad dressing, which their website doesn't as standard) 470 calories and 26 grams of fat. Even the healthiest salad combination contains 340 calories and 13 grams of fat, both of which are considerably higher than the standard hamburger (at 250 cals and 9g of fat). Admittedly, neither quite reach the levels of a Big Mac, which has 540 calories and 29g of fat (45% of your RDA). But I would hardly call it the cornerstone of a healthy diet, much less one which would facilitate losing 6kg a month for 6 consecutive months. And whilst I'm at it, their wraps are hardly a picture of nutritional value either.

Leaving that aside for a moment, what a strangely written article. Is this what passes for prose on the internet? Sentence fragments. And. A general lack of coherence. And why, exactly, should anyone care that his goal is to get back to the 185lbs he weighed when he married Tricia Summer (whoever the hell she is)?


I'm enjoying the post-Irish vote Lisbon Treaty squabbling taking place at the moment. At least in the Czech Republic we have one voice of sanity and common sense.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Feed the Animals' - Girl Talk (not as good as I'd hoped, but anything that samples Temple of the Dog's 'Hunger Strike' and Ace of Base in the same track is fine by me); 'One-Armed Scissor' - At The Drive-In; 'Tired of Sex' - Weezer

Quote of the Day: "The neon signs which hang over our cities and outshine the natural light of the night with their own are comets presaging the natural disaster of society, its frozen death. Yet they do not come from the sky. They are controlled from earth. It depends upon human beings themselves whether they will extinguish these lights and awake from a nightmare which only threatens to become actual as long as men believe it. - T. W. Adorno, 'The Schema of Mass Culture' (my goodness, what would he have made of all of this?)

The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy?

So, voters in the Republic of Ireland have voted against the Lisbon Treaty, rejecting it by a margin of 53.4% to 46.6% in yesterday's referendum. The Lisbon Treaty, let us remember, is itself a compromised and attenuated version of the European constitution which was so resoundingly rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. The Treaty of Lisbon requires ratification by ALL 27 member states in order to become law. It would, as such, be natural to assume that the Treaty has been withdrawn - that bureaucrats, politicians, and lawyers have gone back to the drawing board (again); one might even hope for an acknowledgment that plans for a 'greater' or more integrated Europe are finished, an understanding that even the watered-down version has been rejected by the only EU nation whose citizens were allowed to vote on the Treaty.

But, then, of course, one remembers that this is the EU we are talking about, and that nothing so trifling as the democratic will of the people ought to derail the vision of a United States of Europe to rival that of the USA or China. Ireland, declared EU President Jose Manuel Barroso against all evidence to the contrary, remains "committed to a strong Europe." Now, let us not forget that this was the country which rejected the Treaty of Nice (effectively a referendum on joining the Euro) back in 2001 by a margin of 46.1% in favour and 53.9% against (it is worth noting, as an aside, that as yesterday's referendum demonstrates, the 'No' vote has actually increased in Ireland). What was the EU's reaction? They forced Ireland to vote again, the bill finally passing in October 2002.

There is, of course, precedence for this kind of disregard for democracy within the EU: when Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, they too were told to vote again, presumably until the 'correct' result came up. The fact that Maastricht was initially rejected by such a narrow margin (0.7%) is entirely irrelevant: firstly, voter turnout was extraordinarily high (83.1%) and, moreover, that is the way the democratic process works: on a simple 'yes-no' question, a win by one vote, by 0.1% of the vote, or by 100% of the vote is the same. That is the point of such a vote; the losers cannot turn around and proclaim that they 'almost won', or that they would have won had voters only understood the question adequately. There is no 'almost'; 'almost' is nothing. 'Almost' is defeat, defeat in a democratic vote undertaken by the citizens of a democracy.

Where does the EU go from here? Ah yes, "Ratifications should continue to take their course," stated Barroso. And what, in effect, does this mean? It means that in all of the other EU member-states - the ones in which voters do not get a say in proceedings - the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified. And then, with Ireland the only obstacle remaining, the EU will exert such immense pressure that, in the end, the inevitable re-vote will take place. But what happens if the Irish reject it again? What then? How many rejections is enough for the EU? One? Apparently not, even if it has come from four separate countries (France, Holland, Denmark, and - twice - Ireland). Two? Three? At what stage will the EU get the message - the clear, unambiguous, democratic, and legitimate message - that its citizens (although, of course, let us be clear: the EU itself has no 'citizens', at least not yet. This is precisely what is at stake here) do not want federalism, a common foreign policy, a united army. The EU's sheer contempt for the democratic process, for the will of the people, is breathtaking. The EU is like the stalker (the sex pest?) of Europe, unable to take 'no' for an answer.

The EU is a body whose co-legislative organ, The Council of the European Union, is entirely unaccountable, holding secret votes the results of which cannot be scrutinised by member-state parliaments. It is an organisation whose one deference to the democratic process - MEPs - are, likewise, unaccountable to member-state parliaments. The EU Commission is served by commissioners whose membership is proposed by member state governments and approved by the European Parliament, entirely bypassing any notion of accountability of democracy. It is, finally, an organisation whose central body, the Council of the European Union, has relative voting weights rather than outright democracy. 'One person, one vote' clearly means nothing to the EU.

For too long the opponents of the EU have been branded as nationalist, insular, parochial, ignorant, and racist. No doubt a very few of them are, but many, many more have been poorly served by fringe political parties who do more to de-legitimise their cause than to strengthen it. So-called 'Euro-skepticism' is a legitimate point of view. But the future of the EU is an issue which goes beyond simple left-right, Labour-Conservative dichotomies. Not only is the EU undemocratic, it is actively anti-democratic, not to mention bloated, incompetent, corrupt, self-serving, and wildly unpopular. Even those people who are in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, of the European constitution, of a federal Europe modeled after the USA, ought to be gravely concerned about the EU's democratic deficit. You cannot simply shrug your shoulders and tell the people that you know what is right for them. Europe has been down that road before.

Ouch

According to theweatherchannel.com, the 'Feels Like' temperature at 3 and 4pm tomorrow will be exactly 100F.

By the way, expect that as the Summer goes on, my posts will become more and more weather-obsessed.

Walking in the Sun...

I am a man living in fear: the weather forecast predicts that tomorrow will be a cloudy 96F. Cloudy = humid. 96F = atrociously hot. Will my English constitution survive? Luckily, I'm supposed to be spending most of tomorrow in Brooklyn, where it will, hopefully, be mildly less appalling. But I fear that I might simply melt in the sun - I guess I'll just have to shelter in the shade of the trees. Tomorrow morning, before all of that, I'm going to check out the open air book fair at one of my favourite NY bookstores, Housing Works, and then head over the Brooklyn Bridge to try to speak with/see my parents and sister on that big HG Wells-esque New York-London video pipe thing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're missing out. Hopefully I won't have dissolved into a puddle by then.

Tomorrow calls for the deployment of drastic, terrible measures: sandles or, as they prefer to call them over here 'flip-flops'. Truly, I have sunk as low as one can possibly go.

On the plus side, England's cricket team are currently murdering New Zealand. And I'm about to see Toby! Huzzah!


Songs for the Deaf: 'You' - Atmosphere; KROQ LA (in general); KEXP Seattle (ditto): I've discovered the iTunes radio function, and it is a thing of wonder.

Quote of the Day: "I'm melting, MELTING, oh what a world!!!" - The Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz.

Pulchritudo et Salubritas

I see that my hometown has been in the news today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7430008.stm

I remember a time when my sister and I derisively nicknamed Bournemouth 'BOB' (Boring Old Bournemouth - we were about 12 at the time) - now its all corpses in suitcases, drug-dealing gangsters (sorry Mr Carr, "legitimate businessmen"), and dead students. Still, some things never change:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournemouth_School

Good to see that Mr Granger is still at the helm, slowly steering a once-fine school into the abyss.

And whilst I'm running down my homeland, this story didn't exactly fill me with patriotic pride:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7429638.stm

The choicest line? "It's sweaty on there but I'm going round and round until I vomit" - well said Mr Peter Moore from Brighton. Still, all of this is perhaps understandable: the Circle Line is liable to reduce even the most saintly of souls to violence and vandalism, even without the presence of alcohol.

I'll leave with some words from that ardent and spare chronicler of the decline of modern England, Philip Larkin:


'Nothing To Be Said'

For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.

So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slow dying.
The days spent hunting pig
Or holding a garden-party,

Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.


From 'The Whitsun Weddings'

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Brights knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

The Answer

As I said at the end of my entry from May 17th, the title of that post was taken from a line in a novel. No one got it, but a few people (one anonymous person - who was this? and a couple by email) have asked which novel it was. The answer is 'Money' by Martin Amis.

More soon!

Looka looka yonder! Looka looka yonder! A big black cloud comes!

As compensation for my now destroyed plans to visit Berlin and Prague over the Summer, I've spent this evening planning an altogether different trip to take after my Summer German classes end in mid-August. Trying to plan a trip around the United States is mind-boggling: there are simply so many places to visit, and so many different ways of getting from one place to another, and there can be such huge discrepancies in cost depending on where you want to go. As a graduate student of vaguely poor means (cue violins), I've let my budget largely dictate where I go. It is actually good to be restricted in one way or another, otherwise I'd never be able to narrow anything down.

My original plan was to head to Chicago, Minneapolis (the first place my feet ever touched American soil), and various other places around that area: Milwaukee, the comically-monikered Normal, Illinois, Toledo, Columbus, Kansas City. However, after this itinerary - and especially Toledo - caused James to collapse into hysterics (he said it was like him running up to me and happily declaring a plan to spend the Summer in Blackpool, Hull, and Preston), I've had a rethink. The biggest casualty is, unfortunately, Minneapolis; I still really want to go back, but no matter how I tried to work it, I couldn't make it affordable on this trip. I am, instead, planning a trip around the South. My new and very tentative route - I should add that this might seem like a rather eccentric route to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the geography of America, but, to reiterate, I am guided by my budget - is as follows:

New York-Chicago; Chicago-Memphis, Tennessee; Memphis-Tupelo, Mississippi; Tupelo-Birmingham, Alabama; Birmingham-Nashville, TN; Nashville-Athens, Georgia; Athens-Atlanta, GA; Atlanta-Savannah, GA; Savannah-New York.

Without having a map to hand, it is kind of hard to explain this route. Which is why I've provided one! According to Google maps, my journey will be just over 2850 miles. Here is the link. Unfortunately, for some reason I can't get it to hyperlink, so you'll need to copy and paste it into your browser:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=109593592121057696411.00044dc958703ca375e85&ll=37.439974,-79.101562&spn=16.653772,29.707031&z=5

I aim to take this trip for under $500, which will be no mean feat. I haven't entirely decided on the method of transport between every city - I can, for example, either fly from Savannah to NY, or take the (16 hour) train for the same amount of money. I can also either fly from Atlanta to Savannah or take a bus for pretty much the same amount - but it shouldn't cost more than $300. Chicago-Memphis, for example, will be $10 by bus; Birmingham-Nashville is $29 by aeroplane. If needs be I can sacrifice a couple of places (Tupelo, Athens), but hopefully I won't have to. I plan to take as many overnight buses as possible because a) they are much, much cheaper, and b) it means I have somewhere to spend the night. Otherwise I'm not sure what I'll do about accomodation - just find places as and where I end up. It might sound crazy, but I'm really not worried about it - if worse comes to worse I can sleep in a bus or train station (I can hear my Mum's eyes popping from here), but I'm sure I'll find somewhere. One thing's for sure: I'm not going to freeze in Mississippi and Georgia in August.

So, this is the plan. I am already excited. In my research I found out that Tupelo - the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and the inspiration for two quite brilliant songs - has had a Jewish community since the C19th, and even has its own synagogue, which is remarkable for a Southern town of just over 32,000. There are 20 Jews left in the town - I just emailed the synagogue asking for advice. Hopefully they will take me into the warm bosom of their little community. Any and all suggestions and comments are very welcome.

Any thoughts?

The foes of my body are legion, and far more vicious than my sins

Well, that's it. My first year at Columbia is officially finished. This is good. I won't indulge in a sentimental retrospective because, well, I don't want to. It's over and done with and that's all there is to say. More interestingly, I celebrated the end of the year by seeing Los Campesinos! at the Music Hall of Williamsburg with Adam and James. They were excellent, so accomplished and confident given how young they are. Although their singer does bear a disturbing resemblance to Wayne Rooney...Last night I went to see Iron Man which was equally excellent, and much needed mental relief after a quite horrendous day. Despite my reservations after seeing the trailer, Robert Downey Jr. was completely convincing and the special effects were also excellent. It was, unsurprisingly, remarkably orientalist, but still lots of fun. And, even better, Loews had a HUGE poster for The Dark Knight. July 18th. I cannot wait.

A 20% off sale (off of everything! Even remainder books! Even second-hand books!) at Labyrinth Books has been wreaking havoc with my finances over the past two days. But I can't be blamed...I live on top of the shop! Amongst other things, I acquired a ludicrously large German dictionary; a book of German grammar; a biography of Michael Oakeshott which, to quote my old supervisor Jon Parkin, "isn't very good, but something is better than nothing;" a very nice and interesting old edition of a history of ethics by (Prince) Kropotkin; Knut Hamsun's Hunger (recommended by Mark Anderson, my Kafka teacher, and Tom); Ted Hughes's Collected Poems (because people all over England failed to return my copies of the individual collections before I left for NY - you are all thieves); and various other bits and pieces.

Now I have a few days off before beginning my Summer extravanganza of German. For the next three months I will be eating, sleeping, and breathing the German language until, finally, I become a hardened translation machine, more German than man. I'll also be starting my job for Professor Ira Katznelson around the same time, researching the history of C13th toleration in England.

Finally, yesterday I found out that next semester I will be TA-ing (teaching, for those back home) for Professor Volker Berghahn's course 'The European Catastrophe, 1914-1945'. This pleases me greatly. I can't wait to begin teaching, especially for such an esteemed historian.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Numbskull' - Ash; 'Far Away' - Cut Copy (again); 'The Weight' - The Band.

Quote of the Day: the real quote of the day was said to me and Adam by a random guy down near the Christopher Street 1 stop on Wednesday night, but it's rather unrepeatable. Instead, here's a happy nugget I dug up researching my undergraduate dissertation: "In the final analysis, the joy that beauty brings in its train when it arrives upon the scene is not equal to the sorrow it evokes when it departs." - Petrarch, 'On the Remedies of Good or Bad Fortune', Dialogue 2.

10 points for anyone who can place the quotation which forms the title of this post. Clue? It's from a 1980s novel by the most talented British writer of his generation. But, oh! how he squanders his talent!

Maths and English

Earlier this evening I returned home from a trip down to the Village with James, Adam, Toby, etc. and decided that I wanted some ice cream. The ice cream I was buying came to $3.99. The cashier rang it up, and I handed over a $10 bill. "Do you have 1 cent?" he asked (apologies to any Americans out there - my English keyboard doesn't have the cent sign). Now, it doesn't take an Alan Turing to realize that, in this situation, me handing over $10.01 is not going to help anyone. I am, however, exhausted and feeling pretty sick, so I didn't argue. Moreover, I was quite intrigued as to what exactly the cashier was going to do with my extraneous cent. Just as he handed over my change - after much brow-furrowing resulting, of course, from his realization that he was simply handing back to me the penny I'd given him, plus another one - I ran into a Butler 504 buddy who'd just passed his orals. Hearty congratulations were exchanged, and then off I went. As I got home I discovered that I'd been given $7.02 change. Quite, quite bizarre.

Essays: one down, one to go. Kafka ended up being a whopping 8000 words, but I'm pretty happy with it. Historiography is two-thirds done and, at the moment, consists of little more than a bunch of quotations strung together by a vague narrative. But when you get to quote Quintilian, Kafka, Machiavelli, Koselleck, Cicero, Erasmus, and Benjamin in the same essay, it's hard to complain.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Limb by Limb' - Sebadoh; 'Sofa King' - The Roots; 'Far Away' - Cut Copy

Quote of the Day (new, semi-permanent feature): "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." - Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (Schocken Books, 1965) p. 13.

Random Rules

Today I gave a paper at an academic conference entitled 'New Approaches: Home, Nation, and Landedness in Modern Jewish Identity'. The conference is being held at Harvard, which is, I must admit, a rather intimidating place to deliver one's first ever conference paper. My talk was entitled 'Between Fidelity and Redlichkeit: Leo Strauss's Zionist Synthesis'. It went quite well, although I was put on a very eccentric panel; the two papers before mine were concerned with medical examinations in 1920s Palestine and suicide in Palestine in the 1910s. My paper had absolutely nothing to do with these kinds of empirical questions, and I think that the audience found it rather confusing. Half of them were only interested in the two papers on Palestine and didn't care at all about my paper on Strauss, whilst for the other half the situation was reversed. Anyway, the best thing about these kinds of events isn't so much the papers as meeting other students and academics.

After delivering my paper I received an invite from Professor Ronald Zweig to come and deliver a paper at his Israel Study Group at NYU. More than this, however, it was just nice to talk to other people interested in similar things to me. One of the things I found very difficult about being in England was the sense of (intellectual) isolation, the knowledge that I was completely alone in my intellectual interests. As absurd as it might sound, sometimes it felt as though I was the only person in the world, at least of my age, working on these particular topics and thinkers. Coming to a conference like this is both unnerving and exhilerating: unnerving because it just serves to highlight the huge gaps in my (almost entirely self-taught) knowledge of modern Jewish philosophy and intellectual thought, but exhilerating because it underlines just how many people are doing interesting and intelligent work in areas similar to my own. I've met a lot of very nice and friendly people, some of whom I'm sure I'll see around in the future (quite a few of them are also Columbia students, so that's pretty much guaranteed).

The other great thing about this conference is that it's given me an excuse to get out of New York and come back to Cambridge. The last time I was here was September 2005, when I came for some interviews at the Harvard Government Department. It rained three inches in an hour and was, to say the least, specrtacularly miserable. I distinctly remember opening my rucksack to find my notepad reduced to a watery pulp, before taking my socks off and wringing them out in the toilets. Good times! I shudder to think how bad an impression I must have made, squelching water through the offices of the Kennedy School of Government. Happily, however, the weather this weekend has been glorious, and not even a 3 hour delay to my train (on the first annual US National Train Day, no less) could dampen my mood. Last night I met some friends for dinner, before going to see the world premiere of Stephen Greenblatt's new play based on the recently rediscovered plot of a (probable) lost Shakespeare play, Cardenio. It was so terrible that we left halfway through and instead went to drink in Charlie's, a famous local bar with an excellent jukebox (Pixies, Velvet Underground, Clash).

Cambridge really is a beautiful place, and Harvard itself has an understated majesty. This evening, after the conference dinner, I took a walk through the campus, ending up outside the chapel. For some reason I really love colonial-era US architecture - there's a certain type of American house design which just sings to my English heart; not, I hasten to add, because it reminds me of home, but rather for precisely the opposite reason: there is simply nothing like that in England. Buildings like the Harvard chapel just seem so quintessentially American, and it still gives me a thrill to be amongst them.

Tomorrow night I head back to New York. I return to what I left: 14 hour work days, Kafka, a historiography paper on the futuricity of history, not enough sleep, and almost certainly not enough food. But come Thursday, one way or the other, it'll all be over. Relaxation! Normal eating patterns! A retreat from the onset of alcoholism (the graduate vice, apparently)! Resident Evil 4! Barring weather-related disasters, come Friday I will be donning shorts and a t-shirt and heading into Central Park with my headphones, a strawberry smoothie, and a some kind of non-work related book (maybe even a novel!) in tow.

Songs for the Deaf: today I visited the ever-brilliant Newbury Comics, a fantastic and fantastically cheap comic, music, and movie store. I picked up the new Cut Copy album (for $9!), Danger Doom's 'The Mouse and the Mask', and the 2CD version of Sebadoh's early '90s classic 'III'. Beyond these new purchases, I've listened to the song 'Random Rules' by the Silver Jews at least three times a day for the last ten days. The lyrics are quite, quite brilliant, mixing profundity and genuine pathos. I don't know, maybe it's just my mood right now, but the end of a relationship never sounded as true as it does on that song.

A Screaming Comes Across the Sky...

Alas, all I have time for today is a quick bullet-point summary of the week that was. Significant events of the week:

Yiftach and I walked 130 blocks in the glorious sunshine on Thursday, in the process circumnavigating virtually the entirety of Central Park.

On Friday night James and I went to see Ambulance Ltd. at the Mercury Lounge. They were really quite awful. But earlier that day we saw Taylor Carman give a very interesting paper on the unique role of the humanities - they unconceal the world, in Heideggerian terms - and spent the journey there and back arguing about that, which was significantly more interesting.

Yesterday Daniel and I carried a very large bookcase from West 72nd (btw. Morningside and Columbus, no less) to my apartment - my arms ache today, but at least my book situation is marginally more manageable. I thanked Daniel with a quite frankly splendid lunch, before the two of us headed to the Bronx to do buy some bits and pieces for Daniel's new apartment, which also required a lot of carrying. But the trip to the Bronx completed my set of New York boroughs! I've now, finally, been to them all. The view from 225th on the Bronx is excellent: you can see the northern point of Manhattan, and then trace its outline. The northern tip is, unsurprisingly, rather different from the southern point.

Last night Adam, Daniel, and I visited James and Mary's new apartment. And very nice it is too. But much, much more excitingly than that, we all climbed out onto the roof and took a look at the amazing view. If you lean over the edge a little (it's safe, honest Mum!) you get an amazing view of the Empire State Building and downtown, and we could also make out the lights of three bridges in the dark, plus eagle-eyed Adam noticed the huge History Channel advert on the way into Manhattan from northern Queens. On the other side we could see into other people's apartments. It all got a bit too Rear Window-esque, however, so we retreated back inside to watch the inexplicable Zardoz. I'd never even heard of this film, but evidently it's some kind of American rite of passage. I think that Adam must have had one too many Sour Patch Extremes, because he was squealing and squeaking and shouting "It's in his head!!!" for literally the entirety of the film.

Today I found, and subsequently disposed of, the first cockroach that I've seen in my apartment this year. I reiterate: I do not like cockroaches. I cannot get used to them, and no amount of reading The Metamorphosis will convince me to empathise with their plight. The English do not get on with cockroaches.

I got tickets for Natalie and I to see Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden on June 25th. I'm also going to the show on the 24th on my own. I care not for the words of the dissenters: PJ may not be cool, but I love them anyway. And they are a band who are genuinely committed to their political values (although, apparently, not to their less wealthy fans. 3 tickets = $270. Me = poor). And all of this means that Nat will be visiting for a week or so in June!

Coming up this week: after an unprecedented four days without a guest, Hotel Taylor welcomes my oldest and dearest of friend Jon for a week. Next Saturday evening I have tickets to see a band in Brooklyn with Jon and James, but unbeknowst to me when I bought them, that is also the first night of Pesach and I've been invited to a Seder meal at Liran's house. Religion or music? Charles Taylor is no doubt penning a treatise on the matter as we speak.

Well, this has turned into a longer post than expected. One day I will get around to writing something of actual substance. I just need some time. The deadline for the Harvard paper looms, as does my (self-imposed) deadline for the History of European Ideas review. And papers need to be written. None of this is getting done, however, because I'm too busy reading some excellent books recommended to me by various faculty members and suppressing my excitement at my new PhD dissertation idea. More soon.

Songs for the Deaf: Black Cat - Ladytron; More News From Nowhere - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds; Severed Hand - Pearl Jam

The Kindly Ones

Well, what a hectic and busy week or two. Guests, prospective students, conferences, shows, work: I've been running around in a happy if tired haze for many days now. In the midst of all of this I once again took on the dreaded machine of US bureaucracy, this time successfully. I went back to the Social Security Administration building and applied for my SSN. Then I went and dropped the form off with Sean Sawyer at the History Department office, only to (of course) subsequently receive an email requiring me to fill in yet more forms. Then, yesterday, having received my SSN with fortuitous haste, I completed my Federal and State taxes. This wasn't quite as nightmarish a task as I'd feared, and the results left me happy indeed: whilst I owe New York State $42 (all those high-class call girls come at a price, after all), the Federal government owe me $842! And quite right too; it's disgraceful that the US government tax academic stipends and fellowships at all, let alone the ridiculous rate I was on. But, whilst I'm bemoaning these issues, why oh why don't the UK and USA have a tax treaty? The US and Germany? Check. US and China? Yep. US and Yemen? No problem. But the UK, the country which loyally follows America on its myriad international adventures? Hell no.

A few days ago I helped my friend Liran to write a lecture on Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes. Liran is a friend of Daniel's from Israel, and currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU. He did his MA in Paris under the supervision of Julia Kristeva, which is pretty great in and of itself, but even more interesting (from my perspective) was his PhD dissertation, a critique of Freud's account of death drawing on existential pyschoanalysts like Binswanger, May, Fromm, and my old friend Irvin Yalom. Just to say again, Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, whilst dauntingly large, is one of the significant and impressive books I've ever read, and has decisively shaped a lot of my thought, both intellectual and personal.

Anyway, Liran's lecture was excellent, and it was really good fun to go through the text with him, debating the meanings and nuances of various words in the English language. Given the very extreme nature of Littell's novel, however (about which I knew nothing before Thursday), this led to some conversations which drew a few quizzical looks: "How I about, 'spattered'?" I would venture. "Spattered? What does it mean?" replied Liran. "Well," I explained, "let's say I shot you in the head. The stain it would make on the wall would be a spattering of blood." "But it would also include pieces of brain and skull and so on, not just blood?" "Yes, it could." "Spattered it is then." And I won't go into our discussion of the syntactical legitimacy of the phrase, "a bout of masturbatory excess." "Bout?" asked Liran...

Well, I guess there's plenty more to say, but I've already wasted enough of your time. Happy birthday to James. Oh, and the paper I'm giving at Harvard in May has a title: 'Between Fidelity and Redlichkeit: Leo Strauss's Zionist Synthesis'.

Songs for the deaf: That's When I Reach for My Revolver - Mission of Burma; Hold On Now, Youngster - Los Campesinos!!! (a great album, even if they sound uncannily similar to Architecture in Helsinki at times); (Hey You) What's That Sound? - Les Rhythm Digitales; The Mending of the Gown - Sunset Rubdown (again).

A final thought: "To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames." - Robert Musil.

The Round of Rain

In honour of the ceaseless rain into which I must soon venture, a little Dante:

"I am in the third circle, in the round of rain
eternal, cursed, cold and falling heavy,
unchanging beat, unchanging quality."
- 7-9, Canto VI, Inferno

Optic Nerve

Back in NY, very tired after a night flight via Cleveland. Cleveland's airport is almost like a museum/tribute to Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James (a basketball player, for those of you back home; he's an absolute phenomenon, and can currently be seen on the front cover of this month's Vogue). Seattle was extremely lovely, and perhaps just as importantly, my visa status has been completely resolved thanks to the very helpful and friendly immigration officers at the US-Canadia border. On Thursday Matan and I went to Vancouver. It was a very strange city, a juxtaposition of absolutely stunning natural beauty (Stanley Park and surrounding mountains) and really quite shocking human poverty and degradation. For all of Canada's much-vaunted welfare system, I saw far, far more homeless people on the streets of Vancouver than Seattle, or indeed any other US city. And, just as disturbingly, Vancouver seems to have a real problem with drug addiction: we saw people buying and selling drugs in backalleys, not to mention the woman with needle puncture marks up her entire leg. Unsurprisingly, we didn't linger in that area for too long.

After returning from Vancouver Matan and I spent most of our time watching/playing basketball and watching some films (Hoop Dreams - bit of a theme going on here - 28 Days Later, and some other bits and pieces). I read half of Mishima's 'The Sound of Waves', and a bit more of Chris Brown's excellent 'Moral Capital'. Very, very busy 10 days or so coming up, but hopefully I'll be able to post once or twice. Unlike this rather meandering, go-nowhere message, I actually have a couple of things I want to say/write about.

Anyway, if you so desire, you can check out some photographs from my recent wanderings in New York, Seattle, and Vancouver here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90371&l=6b316&id=222304758

Finally, in the time that I've been away, the toilet water in my apartment appears to have turned blue. I wonder why this would be? Right, I'm off to check the New Zealand-England cricket score; I sense a rare England test series victory, a victory made all the sweeter by the bragging rights it gives me over my New Zealand coursemate Toby. Go Sidebottom!

Greetings from Seattle

Just a quick update from Seattle. I finally arrived here late (very late) on Monday evening after spending 14 hours in Terminal 3 of JFK. The reason for this? No, it wasn't excessive fondness for the near-unavoidable lounge music blaring through the PA system; rather, I was bumped from my original 8:20am flight and instead put on the 7:20pm flight. This was annoying indeed, but happily I was upgraded to Business Class and given a $400 travel voucher as compensation! I spent most of the day reading books, watching CNN, and trying to calculate the best things to buy with my meal vouchers (I went for smoothies, fruit, and cake from *shudder* Starbucks - better that than rotting my innards with the terrible, terrible alternatives). One extremely pleasant flight later, and I was in Seattle!

Thus far I like Seattle very much. It's so nice to be amongst the trees and lakes and mountains, to breathe fresh air and feel the sun (yes, the sun; Seattle has proven most clement so far) on my arms. Some of the views of the views of the mountains and lakes are absolutely stunning. Yesterday Matan and I went up the Space Needle and all around the downtown area. It was nice, but slightly underwhelming. Today we went to the University District, which was absolutely great: fantastic bookstores (I picked up Felix Gilbert's 'Machiavelli and Guicciardini'; a 2-volume copy of Hobbes's translation of Thucydides; a short Mishima novel; and Emil Fackenheim's 'To Mend the World', all for very reasonable prices), nice food, and friendly people. The University of Washington campus is also really beautiful: spacious, verdant, relaxing, with some interesting architecture and buildings. Look out for photos later. I bet you can't wait!

On Friday we're going to attempt to fix my visa issues via a trip to Vancouver. Fingers crossed!

When I was 9 years old my parents took my sister and I to York (this has become an infamous family break for many, many reasons, not least of which because my mother decided, inexplicably, to drive into a pub (literally), in the process completely destroying her car. Having accomplished this, she then started laughing maniacally). A few years later, on the strength of that visit and without knowing anything about the university, or even what I wanted to study, I decided that I would go to university in York. And indeed I did. And it was a good choice, even though I decided based on completely arbitrary, even non-existent, grounds. When I was 14, I decided that I would live in Seattle when I was older. Having now finally visited the city, I would say that that was another good intuition. Seattle would be a fine place to live, especially after New York. Now, let's just hope that the University of Washington has an opening for an intellectual historian in, ooooh, 6 years time.

"Where is God in 1+1=2?"

Hello all,

Since my last post we have passed into a new year; New York became very cold, and then a little warmer; I returned to England for seven weeks, and then left my coat at Heathrow Airport; Barack Obama went from no-hoper to front-runner to somewhere imbetween (Vote BO!); the Giants brilliantly won the Super Bowl; my parents came to NY, but Natalie didn't; and much, much more. I've decided to adopt a new blogging tactic: after this necessarily rather long catch-up post, I'm going to post frequent short messages, rather than infrequent long ones. I feel like I'm on blogging probation and need to win back the trust of my loyal audience (all three of them). I have a story to tell in this post, but before I get to that I wanted to give some sense of what I've been doing since November. And that means lists!

I have read (or re-read): 'The Loser' - Thomas Bernhard; 'Travels in the Scriptorium' - Paul Auster; 'The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; 'Brief History of Nearly Everything' - Billy Bryson; 'The Gum Thief' - Douglas Coupland (dire - sorry Natalie); 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' - Marquez; 'Notes From the Underground' - Dostoyevsky; 'Liquidation' - Imre Kertesz; 'A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines' - Janna Levin; 'Rashomon and Other Stories' - Ryunosuke Akutagawa; plus an extraordinary amount of Kafka, and the usual quota of academic books.

I have seen: No Country for Old Men; The 400 Blows; There Will Be Blood; Juno; Network; Paranoid Park; Dog Day Afternoon; The Deer Hunter.

I have been to: New York; London; Bristol; Bournemouth; Oxford; Philadelphia.

.....

My story:

It all began innocently enough. On Friday morning I got up very early and walked to the Social Security Administration building on 125th. Knowing that it was likely to be very busy, I arrived at 8:45am. The reason for my visit? Professor Mark Mazower is employing me as a Research Assistant, which necessitates me taking a further step toward legitimating my existence in the United States by getting a Social Security Number, without which I cannot be paid. Everything was going well, and by 9:30 my case was being processed. I was little aware of the farce soon to unfold. "You're here on an F-2 visa?" asked the woman behind the desk. "No," I replied, "F-1." For those of you unfamiliar with such arcane terms, an F-1 visa is a visa for international students studying in the US; an F-2 visa is for their partner or spouse, and has very different kinds of restrictions. The distinction, as I was about to learn, is rather important. The woman behind the desk replied that I was "down" in the "system" (an ominous word at the best of times) as F-2 which, she conceded, was rather odd given that both my Visa and DS20-19 clearly state that I'm F-1. "But I can still get an SSN, right?" I asked naively. "No. In fact, you have to go down to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) in Federal Plaza to straighten this out." On hearing this news my heart begun a long, sinking descent; I knew what this meant: bureaucracy of the very worst kind: American bureaucracy.

Gathering what few wits I had left, I journeyed 140 blocks south to Federal Plaza, an area of New York every bit as heinous as it sounds. After surviving an interrogation as to the purpose of my visit by two armed guards, I was finally allowed into the building, only to be subjected to a virtual strip-search accompanied by the ominous ping of latex gloves snapping into place. Soon enough I found myself wandering cluelessly around the lobby of a vast, vast building. Eventually I found a "help" desk (of sorts) and explained my situation. The woman at the desk asked to see my passport, and explained that the immigration officer who processed my re-entry to the US back in January had written my visa status on my I-94 unclearly. As I could plainly see this for myself, I asked the woman to fix it, whereupon she told me that I had to go back to Terminal 8 of JFK and visit The Center for Immigration Blunders, or some such. Now, anyone who has ever tried to get from Manhattan to JFK on the subway (the only way method of transport I could afford) knows that it is a journey made tolerable only by the thought of one's forthcoming escape to happier climes. The thought of undertaking that journey - there and back - for the privilege of standing in line for hours before paying the DHS $320 to fix their mistake did not exactly fill me with glee.

I pointed out that I was planning to leave NY, indeed the US, next week, and that the office in JFK didn't process applications on Fridays, was shut on Sat and Sun, and that my flight left JFK before the office opened on Monday. "You're not going anywhere," cackled the bureaucratic drone with a perverse kind of pleasure. I explained my situation: "On Monday I'm flying to Seattle an-" "Sir," she interrupted, "I think you'll find that Seattle is in the United States." Suppressing my urge to eviscerate her, I instead responded that I was well aware of the geography of Seattle, but that my friend and I were planning a trip to Canada. I was bluntly told that I was not allowed to leave the US until this was sorted out, and, indeed, because my status in the US was currently illegal (because the "system" didn't match my paperwork), I wasn't really allowed to do anything except shut up and go and sort this problem out immediately.

Negotiating my way out of the DHS building ("What was the purpose of your visit?" "Piss off." ), I decided to visit the International Scholars and Students Office (ISSO) at Columbia, wherein I found out that almost everything the DHS told me was wrong; not only was I allowed to leave the US, I had to leave. It was true that my legal status is currently hazy, to say the least, but that the way to fix it is not to visit the Department for American Idiocy in JFK, but rather to exit and re-enter the US, and thus to get a new I-94. It is thus very, very lucky that I happen to be going so near to the Canadian border next week. The only snag is that sometimes the Canadian authorities refuse to accept I-94s from visitors crossing over from the US, so I have to beg them. If they absolutely refuse, I then have to beg the US authorities when I re-enter to give me a new I-94. The ISSO have given me a letter to present to the Immigration Officer explaining my situation, but there is a very small chance that I might be stranded in Canada for a little while.

The thing that really irks me about this whole situation is that Immigration Officer at JFK: all of my troubles come down to the fact that he failed to write '1' instead of '2', even after I double-checked. And what makes it worse is that when I got to his desk he asked to borrow my pen because he didn't have one (this alone staggers belief). So I gave him the very nice Tate Modern pen that Natalie had kindly sent me from England, only for him to fail to return it! So the very same pen which this incompetent buffoon stole from me is the pen which he used to completely mess up my immigration status. A thousand poxes upon him! In conclusion, then, tomorrow I'm going to Seattle. At some point Matan and I are going to Canada. If all goes well, I will be allowed to return. If not, it's a transfer to UBC for me.

Happily, the rest of Friday turned out to be an extremely wonderful day. Daniel and I took a six-hour walk around the East Village, Alphabet City, and Lower East Side, ending up in East River Park underneath the Williamsburg Bridge watching the aeroplanes land at JFK. Then followed the buying of some books, much revelry at Abhishek's birthday celebrations, and finally the close of the evening which saw me, James, and Adam playing very old arcade games in a hotdog place on St. Mark's. Even in his inebriated state Adam inevitably crushed James and I.

So, more, including photographs, when I return from Seattle. If you made it to the end of this gargantuan post, thanks very much.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Jamie' (acoustic) - Weezer (a song about something very awful which somehow makes it seem a little less painful); 'Today's Lesson' - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; 'The Mending of the Gown' - Sunset Rubdown.