on the possibilities and conditions of lakshmi singh taking me as her young lover

i've been listening to npr on the internet at work (wnyc in particular, bigitup bigitup bigitup nyc, peace) and it makes the time go by hella fast. i start my mornings with the gentle pace of morning edition and marketplace, only to be drift away on a carpet of cerebral discussion and bland, non-offensive ethnic music courtesy of Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate with news bulletins from newsreaders with impossibly exotic names bearing witness to the rich ethnic tapestry of America like Soterios Johnson, Steve Innskeep and Renee Montagne (create your own npr name here: mine is Dapniel Lucerne, Adelle's might be Adrelle Chibougamau (not in Europe, but awesome and within the spirit of the game).

the highlight of my radio day, however, has to be soundcheck, a daily look at music with john schaefer (need to work on that name, man) that has filled in the gaps of my musical formation which has up until know consisted of a handful of songs on loop. through this show, i've discovered ted leo and the pharmacists, harlem, le poisson rouge (so hip they don't even have a website or any music on youtube!), jonathan coulton and a host of other bands with equally pretentious names and ironic instruments. really helps one get through that 2:00 slump in productivity (although, in all fairness, my entire day can often be described as one enlongated slump in productivity, a dilemma which my dockworking ancestors would have envied).

i do hope you are all well and reading this in good health.

Symphony No. 9 (Scherzo)

for nearly two months now i've been slogging through orhan pamuk's "museum of innocence", a 500-something page clustercuss about star-crossed Turkish cousins (only not really, something about a distant relative by marriage and a beauty contest gone horribly wrong), one of whom is an adulterous heir to an industrial firm. it's definitely made me more aware of turkey, a country i had honestly never really considered as anything beyond an honourary "stan", but it's been torture to get through. i am convinced that someone is pasting pages into the book's spine as i sleep. or perhaps the book is engorging surrounding books while i am not looking, resulting in an odd hybrid between a parody of turkish postwar secular values and Jean Chrétien's 1984 memoir, "straight from the heart".

i am resisting the urge to give up on the book by sending it into a dusty exile only to be picked up years later in haste as i rush out to an event where reading material is obligatory: a weekend afternoon in the park, a shift at the library during exam time, lunch with Adelle (JUST JOKING! JUST JOKING!) and only to discover that it is brilliant and that i was a fool for giving up on it just before things started to get good.

i have, however, moved on to other literary pursuits but there's nothing that captivating. ian mcewan's "saturday" is quite fun, but little more. it's the literary equivalent of an ice cream sandwich: pleasant on a hot day, familiar, even reminiscent of one's childhood, yet forgotten as soon as it's done except for the residue left on one's fingers.

now that i've finished mixing metaphors like a magic bullet, i'll be off.

as long as i can remember, i've been trying to get past post-modernism and post-modernity

hello, internautes! what's doing, what's happening?

my goodness, more than a year since i've updated this. i knew this would happen; i hate writing blogs. i should, however, get in the practice of writing more often.

i'm working at AINC at enjoying it quite a bit. i hope it will land me a sweet cataloguing job on campus during the school year and an even sweeter library job after. i've looked into the possibilities of working at a library in one of the territories, where they is quite a bit of demand for librarians who are willing to face the brutal winters and $10 boxes of spaghetti.

the other option is to take advantage of my EU citizenship and work there. Amnesty sometimes posts job listings which look awesome, even though the pay is quite low for living in London. my savings would be non-existent, but i would get to weekend in Paris and be able to receive dutch language radio stations and eat sandwiches at pret à manger and eat exotic crisp flavours and take the guardian over a cup of adult coffee every morning (a most welcome change from the maroon-coloured swill that passes for coffee here).

the other option is dublin, which would probably be easier with the whole EU thing, but its economy is wonky.

in other news, here are some new expressions i've learned since working at AINC:

"a dog's breakfast": a mess, a shitstorm, etc.

"a bun fight": a bureaucratic struggle for power or, frequently, a bureaucratic struggle to evade responsibility for a menial task (i.e. emergency preparedness)

"taberouette", "tabernouche", etc

"brouiller comme une vache": to bawl like a cow. how québécois de souche.

"you promise to faithfully accomplish the orders given to you by your hierarchical supervisor(s) as long as they do not expressly contradict Canadian and/or provincial law or the public interest": one of many promises I had to sign that almost certainly led to me wavering Constitutional rights.