Find me here.

An exception to every rule

Because the year in books is a way to mark the passage of time. This year's literature round-up is frankly embarassing. First, because I didn't read very much. Second, because a lot of the books I did read were crappy and for work. And finally, because it has been a year of easy distraction and false ambitions. Certain of said ambitions (the LSAT, for example) took up a great deal of time that would have been better spent on literature.

As in 2006, the new year will not have the ambitious (for me) literary quota of 2005. Now is a time for writing. And changing place of employment. You know what? I think I will also start doing this for movies.

Key:
R=reading it again
W=read for work
*=really fucking good

1. The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean
2. The March, by E.L. Doctorow
3. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace (R,*)
4. Consider the Lobster, Ibid.
5. Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
6. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding*
7. The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
8. Inside the Wire, by Erik Saar and Viveka Novak (W)
9. Camille's Children, by Camille Geraldi (W)
10. Guantanamo: The war on human rights, by David Rose (W)
11. For God and Country, by James Yee (W)
12. The Information, by Martin Amis
13. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro*
14. The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene*
15. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov*
16. Faceless Killers, by Henning Mankell
17. Strange Affair, by Peter Robinson
18. Table of Contents, by John McPhee
19. The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
20. The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
21. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion*
22. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman (R,*)
23. Elizabeth: the biography of Elizabeth Taylor, by J. Randy Taraborelli (W, don't ask)
24. Spy: the Funny Years, Various Authors*

One thing that I enjoyed immensely, though not technically a book:
n+1, Issue Four

Works in Progress, likely to be included in 2007 list:
Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
[Both get * so far]

Last year's list can be read here.

Oh, blog! How I miss thee. Thy audience hath departed for greener pastures at thine own bidding.
If a tree falls in the woods...

Poppies... Poppies will make them sleep

I AM SORRY. Writing for fun isn't so fun anymore when you have to write for a living, especially since I now have to write inane online commentary for my newspaper.

WHEREAS, Robotic Tronic, though not dead yet, is entering a phase of hibernation.

WHEREAS, I have recently undertaken other activities, most importantly applying for a Fulbright to travel to Mozambique, that if realized will almost certainly be a catalyst to returning to Robotic Tronic. On a grimmer note, I am also applying to law school.

WHEREAS, the onset of prolonged cyber-sleepiness, while mostly due to the fact that I have no internet connection at home, is also related to bleak thoughts I have had lately about writing, namely that nobody reads anymore. This may have something to do with the plasticity of my immediate environment, but I do feel that I have dedicated myself to irrelevancy. I am not giving up, but something has withered.

WHEREAS, even with these dark thoughts, I persist. This and this forced me to admit that writing a play about murderous elephants and majoring in something silly in college were more prescient than I could have realized.

Nonetheless, a season of change has enveloped this robot.

THEREFORE, check back here in July 2007, when these wrinkles have smoothed themselves out.

All of that fuss came to nothing. Bo-ring.

Castro's dying, Tropical Storm Chris is brewing, Miami Vice is in the theaters...I just spent three hours at Cafe Versailles drinking cortaditos with former political prisoners amid a chorus of honking horns and waving flags. It's a little crazy here right now.

O jogo bonito

There's a scummy British pub in Miami incongruously placed in the heart of Little Haiti that features wall-sized screens and bangers and mash in a dark cave that would probably strike fear into the hearts of even cave-dwelling cockroach eaters. It's called Churchill's. I watched the World Cup there with an audience pretty evenly split along national lines (although the people nearest to me were the ones screeching "ALLEZ!") I was rooting for Italy, mostly because I have a crush on Pirlo.



Yes, I'm aware of his feathered hair. Anyway: the best moment of the game was obviously the head-butt, when the bar erupted in wonder. My friend, standing next to me in the glow of many screens replaying the incident, could only gaze forward and whisper, "That head-butt's going to be famous."




But while Zidane displayed remarkably unsportsmanlike behavior, (will we ever learn the words that provoked the rage of a charging bull?) his dramatic exit was probably the most street thing that's ever happened in soccer. With the head-butt, Zidane puts the most thuggish rapper to shame. His Count Von Count hairline is now justified by his actions. The mystical vision in the night that compelled him to return to the sport takes on another meaning: did perhaps the voice mean him harm? Is it improbable that Zidane was motivated to return not by a force of good, but by a force of evil? Did he sign a Faustian pact to propel his team onward that he suddenly rejected, only to be punished by Mephistophelian demons who took his head in their claws and used it as a battering ram against a fragile Italian solar plexus?

Whatever the answer, I'm glad his team lost. But in his fall from grace the former model of all things good, the family man, the elder statesman of French soccer, made his point in a way that had he used his hands or his legs or his elbows wouldn't have been nearly as impressive, nor as honorable. For one moment, Zidane showed us what the game is truly about. And he may have lost his head, but all athletes must be driven by a certain savagery that mere mortals lack (I, for one, get bored after about five minutes of playing any sport). It must be a struggle to maintain the facade of normalcy. You can't be angry with Mike Tyson for what he did, and you can't be angry with Zidane. And when Materazzi said, ''You make mistakes in life, but then you have to purify yourself, without seeking revenge. Everyone has their destiny,'' you sort of want to punch him in the face for being such a pious motherfucker.



I am really, really sad that the World Cup is over. Today is like the day after Christmas. Even the Italians honking their horns outside my window all night knew that morning would dawn bleakly.

Tour depants

"But the Jan does not do the transfusions of blood, or the micro-injections of EPO, or the eating of the horse testicles for strength.

The Jan is being a simple man. The Jan takes in schnitzel and beer, and outputs death and pain. It is being that simple."

No more Il Basso. No more Kaiser Jan. A sad day in sports.