I searched Google by naively typing dusty books make me sneeze. The 12th site displayed was quite peculiar. It begins with a confession:

I actually like stories by non-fetishists better for getting off, some of the time — and I google them out (through phrases like “she sneezed” and such) regularly. [...] I suppose it just makes me less self-conscious to read descriptions of sneezing fits from people who aren’t concentrating on it. Kind of like a candid shot, you know?

And continues with this shared experience:

The last romance novel I read with really good sneezing in it [...] was Karen Anders, Almost Naked, Inc, [...] Anyway, for two pages, the hero is underneath the heroine’s bed, hiding, and it’s really dusty, and she tells it from his point of view. He’s struggling to not sneeze, and listening to the heroine talk to her mom. Then, after the two women leave the room, he get out, shakes off the dust, and sneezes, muffling the sneeze with his shirt. It was so hot, I read it several times!

Article 1 of the Sneeze Fetish Forum Constitution addresses the site’s Mission:

This website exists to provide a comprehensive, reliable, permanent and enjoyable communication resource for the online sneeze fetish community.

I kid you not. Thanks, technology!

Amazing. Their Literature section is quite impressive. And these are some of the courses which include audio and / or video elements.

For anyone interested in what they damage they inflicted with €72.80, here’s the order they placed at Pri Vitezu, Breg 18-20, Ljubljana:

Mushroom soup x 2 €12
Medallions of veal €18
Lamb with thyme €18
Green salad x 2 €8
Fruit salad x 2 €14
Sparkling water €2.80

€6 for mushroom soup and €7 for fruit salad seems a tad unreasonable, especially in Ljubljana (Žižek had the veal, by the way).

For those who are less interested in culinary fare, click directly on the link (although it may available only to subscribers). There’s not much that is new; personal highlights include reading Titanic as both reinforcing the social order and restoring Rose’s identity. The Jack Dawson character (played by DiCaprio) “literally draws her picture”.

And then, after his [Jack's] job is done, he can f*** off and disappear. He is – what I would call in theory – a pure vanishing mediator. It is not a love story. It is vampiric, egotistic exploitation

And here is Žižek’s Hegel moment, although quite what kind of gun Thornhill is holding is not disclosed.

If you asked me at gunpoint what I really like, I would say to read German idealism, Hegel. What I like most, what I love the best, is this objectivity of belief

Oh, yeah, and he calls Adam Kirsch “stupid” (see here).

Here is Oliver Burkeman:

The faintly depressing human tendency to seek out and spend time with those most similar to us is known in social science as “homophily”, and it shapes our views, and our lives, in ways we’re barely aware of.

He goes on

The unspoken assumption here is that you know what you like – that satisfying your existing preferences, and maybe expanding them a little around the edges, is the path to fulfilment. But if happiness research has taught us anything, it’s that we’re terrible at predicting what will bring us pleasure. Might we end up happier by exposing ourselves more often to serendipity, or even, specifically, to the people and things we don’t think we’d like?

Thank you for the kind advice, sir, but “no”, I think not. I’d rather not.

I can only tell you that I wish I could choose otherness. But this choice is dependent upon an already pre-existing and stable foundation. Likeness of mind, shared values, and the pursuit of common goals are life-enhancing things. It’s a predicament that ostracised selves can only long for, an unattainable luxury. Perhaps University has done too much good.

I judge people by which section they are in in a bookstore

Shallow? Me? Absolutely.

Here’s another that I remember:

I used to treat my condition as an excuse; now I use it to try harder.

It’s a lovely bit of edifying, self-transformational enlightenment, and it functions perfectly well regardless of the condition that you care to attach yourself to (bulimia, ADHD, alcoholism, etc.,). What if this was conceived, improbable as it sounds, by someone after watching an Oprah re-run on the Hallmark channel, or by someone driving home from the strip-club.

Does its stained origins make any more or less meaningful? Is it enhanced or ruined?

It takes too much to decide, so just use it to be better.

The reason? The very existence of the Journal of Management, Spirituality, & Religion. Don’t let the innocuous looking www.jmsr.com lull you into any sense of anything; indeed, my initial judgement was that the enjoining of the terms proves the death of all four.

The problem (insofar as it is a problem), I think, is that journals such as this tap into an undercurrent that exists on a research level (for example). There is also the unintended consequence: what one learns does not lead inevitably to one’s career. And there is the temptation to deal with the exotic, hence the attempt at speculative philosophy in Newcastle University Business School.

It is also worthwhile to mention the work – such as it is – of Robert H. Nelson (Economics as Religion and the earlier Reaching for Heaven on Earth: the theological meaning of economics). On the one hand, these do not advance theoretically beyond (the young) Hegel, Weber, or Zizek’s Weber (‘Protestantism becomes superfluous, it can vanish as a mediator, the moment the very social reality is structured as a “Protestant universe”’, For they know not what they do, Verso, London, p 184), but these “advance” the debate toward the utility of certain claims, which in turn will eventually gloss over the meaning of management as control.

Regardless, though, what’s funny is this comment from the original thread:

I think I would subscribe if there was a fourth term that would somehow destabilize the equation with the promise of possible awesome consequences: say, Journal of Management, Spirituality, Religion and Deliciousness….

Much better than my own attempt: “Interdisciplinary Journal of Management, Spirituality, Religion & Street Art”

This morning’s Financial Times carries an article by two prominent public figures, Ban Ki-Moon and Al Gore. In case you need reminding, one is the United Nations Secretary-General, while the other is a former Vice-President of the United States of America and author of An Inconvenient Truth.

The article itself, Green growth is essential to any stimulus, promotes various initiatives which may well turn out to be of significance in the Grand Scheme of Things.  What caught my attention, however, is the concluding paragraph:

For millions of people from Detroit to Delhi these are the worst of times. Families have lost jobs, homes, healthcare and even the prospect of their next meal. With so much at stake, governments must be strategic in their choices. We must not let the urgent undermine the essential. Investing in the green economy is not an optional expense. It is a smart investment for a more equitable, prosperous future.

This is such a spun-up, rousing conclusion to an article as you would see in a Hollywood courtroom drama.

Are we so complacent and so trusting that we don’t ask the basic question? Call me cynical, call me tom, heck, call me cynical tom, but there is no way on this Green Earth that Ban Ki-Moon and Al Gore actually wrote the words that make up that paragraph. Who writes Al Gore’s “Op-Ed” pieces?

We must not let the urgent undermine the essential

Looks to me they took a leaf out of Covey.

Of the many soap variants, one in particular has survived countless transformations. It comes dressed in many guises: this is the investigative-mystery. Regardless of the actual story told, it follows a broadly discernible structure. It involves the linear piecing together the end of which solves – or, links to – a mystery disclosed early on in the piece. “Flash-backs” is an often used device, but the forward logic is unrelenting. Hundreds of programs follow this same logic. Try it: from “Desperate Housewives” to “Scooby Doo” and “Magnum P.I.”.

There is, of course, a built-in flaw with this genre. The audience is never ‘in on it’. The story, always and everywhere, takes the point of view of the character. In actuality, although investigate-mystery programs involve a whole cast of characters, it is sufficient to speak of The Character: all characters function as if they share and participate in the group-think collective consciousness of The Character. Few try to extend this template – “Boomtown” was one noble effort, and that’s why it was cancelled.
Given the bulk of television programming that takes place within the investigative-mystery framework, it is surprising how little prepared we are to evaluate such a sub-genre. What makes it successful? How are we to differentiate between a good and poor articulation, of the pit-falls and surprises of the genre? The Trinity of CSI programs allows for such an evaluation.
The original CSI first aired in 1976, whose lead character was filled by an actor more notable for his big screen experience. I refer, of course, to Quincy M.E., which starred Jack Klugman’s Quincy, a role which William Peterson would reprise in 2000 as Gil Grissom. This updating of the original Quincy M.E. template took an ironical stance with itself from the very start, readily acknowledging its forefathers. Humor and the latest special effects seemed to be engaged in a fruitful combination, fueling storylines both compelling and entertaining.
If CSI’s storylines were intriguing enough to entice, yet remain uncomplicated so as to draw a commercially attractive audience (and hence advertising stream), this was due to good plots (and the lack of minor sub-plots), absent run-of-the-mill characterizations and unobtrusive acting. To be sure, the gore appeal of CSI helped.
All these were over-turned, however, in the spin-off series CSI: Miami.
The conflicting sense of normality and dislocation that viewers shared on the original CSI’s Las Vegas setting was replaced by a Miami that is home to retirees. The art deco scenic sets were a pale mirroring of the good, old days of Miami Vice, Crockett and Tubbs. The problem with CSI: Miami, however, extends beyond precedents, which the original CSI managed to sit comfortably with. We begin to see the less than subtle intrusion of a moral agenda onto the small screen, beginning with the lead character.
There is a certain symmetry within CSI: Miami. Florida has the death penalty; the series has a deeply moralistic Horatio Caine, a character thoroughly flawed in his “black, not white” moral view of the world. Where before, in the original CSI, Grissom was mindful of the separation of Art (forensics) and Violence (the policing and enforcing the forensics), David Caruso conjures, in Caine, a symbol of lawless law enforcement, where the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong is not only dissolved but celebrated, and so too the distinction between judge and jury. Caine is the living embodiment of a fundamentalist Christian world-view that has conquered America since Reagan’s 80s.
Caine, indeed, would live long in the memory as a character of note were it not for Caruso’s wooden acting. The contrast extends in the choice of The Who’s music as soundtrack. For CSI: Miami, it is “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. The baggage implicit in the title song lacks the subtlety CSI’s spooky, yet playful “Who are you”, which poses an existential dilemma without offering an answer.
Marx once wrote that world historic events occurs twice: “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. He was right. The stars above the desert skies are much more evident than along the Florida coastline.

I always imagined old Harland Sanders – the title is honorary – as an enlightened plantation owner who stole his recipe from one of the slaves. Not that this stopped me from liking them chickens: he probably shared his profits, right?

By the time I found myself in the United Kingdom during the latter stages of the Thatcherite regime, it had turned into mere KFC. It was now a place where I entered to escape the cold, during days which were magically compressed by long, expansive nights, and no longer where hormonally fueled boys would rendezvous to scout for girls. I had left home for boarding school when I was 17, and knew little of life’s basics when I was unleashed during weekends. Even worse, London’s streets were littered with those who weren’t invited to the Yuppie Revolution, homeless people who would sneak into the restaurant to snatch at leftovers, the bare bones other diners had seen wise to leave on the trays. The staff, mostly immigrants from South Asia, would chase these hungry scavengers away, much as how you would shoo a bird. Imagine that. What had happened? This, coupled by a newly acquired environmental sensitivity, meant fewer visits to fast food outlets.

Last night, due to a lack of moral backbone, I indulged – is this the write word? – no, I punished myself with a three piece meal. I proudly answered when the drive thru attendant posed the now routine question:

Original or Crispy?

This morning, I struggle to rid a grimy coating from my fingertips, but no matter how hard and often I scrub, they refuse – and now my keyboard is coated with this fine veneer of slime. Would I been better off if I had licked them clean? All through the day, I pay the price for excess (the older you are, the more benign the “excess”), paid in the currency of sheets of toilet rolls.

One of the reasons why this site has seen little activity is due to the near completion of my new abode, The Berth. It is the first development on Sentosa, an island off Singapore. Unfortunately, the excitement in anticipation of finally moving into my apartment is being negated – daily – by those who hawk themselves as “interior designers”. The situation is dire indeed.

Their first failing is simply not listening. This is what is desired, but that is what is delivered. I suspect this lack of understanding is not totally ill-intended, but a result of an inability to conceive of what a non-Singapore residence means. Their template has been cast, their thinking, their creativity can be measured not in leaps and bounds, but in millimeters, as their crawl their way through pages of countless magazines in seach of what carries weight in the market. All different but yet all the same. This is no bad thing if the typical Singapore apartment or house is the pinnacle of style, the embodiment of aesthetic living. This is not the case. I shudder at the thought of these hideous, hideous domiciles and the impact they exert on the creatures living within them. Always the 42″ plasma TV, king of the living room; always the Zen/Resort feel, a perennial longing for something that their rat-race lives demands as meagre compensation, only to elude them; or, always the gaudy curtains and the little items of individation that litter the place, suffocating space.

The third failing is of course quite understandable. It is their inter-linking with contractors who implement their “vision”. Virtually all of these interior design companies, or “space planners”, are glorified contractors. They are the front end of a very base chain. Hence their preference to design and construct homes which are flooded with needless feature walls, raised platforms, where embellishments and profits take centre-stage instead of good taste.

And so … until the next update, when I shall report on the results of my own designs! How difficult can it be?