Apples, Rick and Art

I've not been updating much recently, but then I've been somewhat busy. So you'll have that. A few things that I've recently discovered which have confused the hell out of me:

1) Food. Mystery. Novels. While I understand how the final two words in that sequence are supposed to work together, I'm still a bit lost on the first. I've discovered the existence of this genre while doing my laundry. In the laundry room of the building I'm living in, which is mostly vacant when I'm home to do my laundry (Fridays after, like, 1am) there's a folding table that holds a stack of apparently communal books. Things to read if you're hanging out in the laundry room near the creepy darkened fenced in section under the tree that wants to die because it's in a laundry room. Many of the books are standard $1.99 paperbacks that never quite made it big, several of them mysteries and some of them, that's right, food mysteries. Things like this that focus a whodunit plot on eating, cooking and the like. Several have recipies in the back that relate to whatever the central food of the mystery is. They've got names like "Dying on the Vine", "Death Al Dente", "Candy Apple Dead" and "Double Shot". They appear to be written mostly by either a man named Peter King or a woman named Ellen Hart, evidently the luminaries of the field. I don't actually know what demographic finds these most appealing, though I suppose it's simply a combination of two things people might like. I remember reading two different mysteries that had a hockey theme when I was very young, presumably because young boys might like both hockey and mysteries, but I don't think I'd be able to comprehend "Hockey Mysteries" as as much of a genre as "Food Mysteries" seems to be. Maybe I'm missing something though. I haven't read any of the books in the laundry room of my apartment building, but may have to just to understand what the hell is going on.

2) Evidently, in defending the War in Iraq, Santorum through out some complex, crazy-assed Lord of the Rings reference at the debate yesterday that kind of implied that the current strategy for the war on terror is to keep Iraq unstable and have terrorists kill people over there so that we're not getting killed. While "not having us killed" is good, simply substituting people to get killed for us is not, some of those people he's substituting are troops, and diverting terror attacks onto other targets isn't really a viable goal. But the real problem, at least from my perspective, is that he likens terrorist organizations to the "Eye of Mordor". Ignoring for a moment the problems with comparing the war in Iraq to a fantasy novel, including the problems of comparing the varied terror organizations and individual terrorists a single consolidated eye, the real issue is that his comparison fails because the Eye was the Eye of Sauron. Mordor was a location, and while that's where the Eye was located, Mordor did not posess the eye.

PA voters: If you're not going to take this guy to town for any of the seriously bizarre things he's said and the fact that he's pretty far off the nutty end of the pool, and that his best defense is to now liken what he does in Washington to Tolkein novels, at least demand of your Senator that he know what the objects in his metaphors are called. Vote. Him. Out.

3) I've been listening to a lot of weird stuff at work lately, since buying my super-awesome and super-freaking-huge wireless headphones so that I can listen to streaming audio in this impregnable radio fortress. Mostly NPR and podcasts of Penn Jillete's radio show, which is pretty damn good, and narrowly avoiding what I would think to be my low point today by refusing to listen to C-SPAN radio. Incredibly strange stuff to be found here, where you'll find a schedule for what public radio station is playing what program when, including Deutche Welle Radio. I figured I'd listen for a perspective outside of the Chicago radio I'm usually listening to, and having minored in German know at least a minimal amount about what's happened in the recent history of Germany. Today's "Movement Featured on DW-Radio That I Never Knew Existed Because I'm Not Exactly Plugged Into Art But Am Not Surprised That It Does": Stuckism.

Who knew.

ADDENDUM:

I'm going to be going through my blog over the next couple days attempting to put labels on as many posts as I can. So watch for that. Also, I have a cut on my palm from a rough piece of glass that I got yesterday and is really more of a scratch, but is in a terrible damn place and hurts quite a lot. So there's that.

Conquering Ayn

So, I've gotten into the habit of amassing what will comprise my reading for the summer. I've got this weird little habit, actually, of balancing a book which is perhaps less up there on the hardcore intellectual fare with one that actually does carry some weight so that I don't get weird looks from the cashier at the book store. It's dumb, but somehow, purchasing a comic book about zombies seems less dumb when it's paired with an introduction on Heidegger. Who knew.

This summer, I've decided via my last few purchases, is the summer I'm actually going to sit down and figure out what the hell Ayn Rand was on about. Having read Atlas Shrugged and not being able to force myself to read Anthem, I've got a taste of her ideals, but it always seems like any kind of moderate stance that's been presented has been taken to the extreme by some, particularly the Ayn Rand Institute, which, to me, seems to warp what could be reasonable philosophies into ultra-right nutjobbery. So, in an effort to finally come to an opinion on Ayn that stands up to intellectual scrutiny, I've gone and bought The Fountainhead and Philosophy: Who Needs It?. We'll see how long that holds itself together.

A bit about this development. I, for one, think that the Senate could probably be doing better things with their time than making English the "national language." I'm not confusing the terms there. The vote is to make English the "national language", not the "official language", which appears to afford it a similar status to the "national bird". I just don't see a need for it. It's already obvious that in order to attain much success in the United States, you're going to need to be pretty good with English anyway, and not knowing English is probably going to relegate you to a service role. Everyone acknowledges this. That said, I can't imagine what voting English "the national language" is meant to accomplish, as it doesn't actually do anything. Then again, I'm not a big fan of making English the official language (as I don't see the point seeing as how English is the de facto official language, will be for the forseeable future, and bilingual and polylingual states do just fine, it seems, even when they're officially polylingual) and can't understand why one should not know at least two languages functionally.

Similarly, this kind of stuff is nonsense. I actually dig on the metric system, but it's absurd to fine people for selling produce by the pound.

Moved

So, I haven't been updating recently. The O'Halloran lab has moved from the dark confines of part of the K wing of the Technological Institute to a ground level crowded little spot in a building across the way. Unfortunately, this has meant that over the last week, all research has been forced to a halt, which I'm not a big fan of as I'd like to put something together to justify the fact that I'm in grad school. And that moving has been an enormous pain.

If I find a digital camera, perhaps, I'll get some photos of this place.

But, moving on.

I'm not going to be too upset when, as I'm leaving this place pretty soon for home, I'm not watching this Pirates-Mets matchup. Maholm has been getting out of jams through the first few innings, but has walked in a run and the best performance in the world isn't going to help if the opposing pitcher (Tom Glavine tonight) is throwing a perfect game through four. Sanchez got the start again, and though he did rush a throw to first on a Glavine chop and was charged wtih an error, I'm glad they've gotten him in to the lineup again. Necessary. Hopefully, they can pull something together to take away from the sting of the 12th inning loss on a walk off homer.

I've finally caved and bought the Da Vinci Code, and I'll be done with it tonight. It's certainly not the revolutionary (in the literary sense) masterpiece I've heard it called, but it's all right, and about up to my expectations for anything that I find in a supermarket at 2am for $8. Then again, a guy that owns Half Baked probably shouldn't be too critical of the media put before him, so I'll leave it at that. I do have two criticisms. 1) If you're going to have 105 chapters in your book, you're probably making the chapters too small. I can't help but feel that they're kind of forced. 2) If you're going to try to sell me a book using the word "since", I'm more impressed by "since the Second World War" or "since Dostoevsky's time" than "since Harry Potter." Nothing against the Potter books, as I haven't read them and so can't comment, but if you're using the word "since" in a context that's supposed to impress me, you're going to have to go back further than 1997.

I might comment on the Moussaoui thing later tonight, but mostly, I'm just going to go home now.