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.

Lost.

Blank.

Space.

A white canvas unadorned by the imprint residues of tapped keys.

He searched for inspiration; he reflected. What did I write for last week’s column?

He shared the back page of The Financial Times’ weekend edition: “Last Word” it blazed.

His colleague’s image occupied prime real estate space on the upper right corner of the page. Tyler Brûlé. That Idiot.

It would be typical of Tyler Brûlé - the cheek of the accents! the unmerited, nouveau riche “û” and the undeserving “é” – for Brûlé to write about the import of a Club Sandwich, or irrelevancies, about anything he particularly knew nothing about.

Fool.

The fingers of his left hand shifted. The keys moved, as if orchestrated by an invisible hand.

The writing was not painful today. He wrote from the heart; he was about to enjoy the irony.

Harry saved the file in the “Current FT Assignments” folder, open his email application; a short cover note, several clicks to attach the file, and he signed off with his customary “/h”.

His work was done, and it would appear, maybe the next week, next month, in the usual place. It would engage with “the evil of banality”. Next to Tyler Brûlé.

The site is still in its infancy, and is currently soliciting inputs and volunteers for further development. Do leave a message there and / or contact the site administrator if you wish to participate.

I don’t have any issues with its personality; indeed, I find Monday to be the poster child of the emo generation. However, just to confess: for the first time in a while, I have a genuine conflict of interest this Monday, one that will test – in a grimace inducing way – my entire value system.

The confessional aspect is that I am about to sacrifice my Monday night football (“soccer”) game, 120 blood-and-thunder minutes of the Beautiful Game (with its attendant adrenaline rush) for 129 minutes of “a Macedonia / Germany / Italy / Bulgaria / Spain” cinematic collaboration called Shadows.

It hardly seems fair.

I used to subscribe to the Times Literary Supplement; each new issue invariably arrived on a Tuesday, and it would be the focal point until, once religiously devoured, the following week’s arrival. Book reviews of scholarly, sometimes academic, tomes being the focus of the TLS, each issue practically re-invented itself anew; a well-chosen cover, unpredictable and bearing no relation to the content, made the TLS a true weekly.

One fixture was Hugo Williams fortnightly (?, I forget) “Freelance” column. I remember him asking in an ancient issue:

Is it being a past-oriented person that makes one a writer, or vice versa? I read recently that writers are rarely contented because they trespass on sacred ground.

Indeed.

This spring-cleaning of this domain – notwithstanding a much needed re-design – began with a simple culling of old links. The musical Memphis Cat is gone; downtheinkwell has stopped writing. totalitarianism today is birthing a child or three. democratic underground has gone all mainstream and relevant.

On a cheerful note, s p u r i o u s is back, while I’m glad pas au-delà is still around.

The biggest shock, however, is that “Politics” is no longer a category on these pages. How the times have changed me.

1. Mexicana – Always Late.
2. Air pollution is relative – Mexico City is the embodiment of Natural Beauty compared to Havana.
3. You’ve heard of Eco-Tourism? Well, in Cuba they practice Socialist Tourism. It’s something along the lines of, … how shall I describe it, “Scam the Tourists”.
4. Don’t tell US Immigration you’ve been to Cuba.
5. On the whole, a stay at a luxury, boutique hotel (Bulgari, Four Seasons) in Bali is better value than its equivalent in Mexico.
6. Fidel exiled Che to his death. Probably.

They are, nonetheless, all intrinsically good people, with a goodness that washes away sullen souls, always. Happily, this process of friendly acquisition is a mutual exercise, and I feel quietly privileged for it; not the privilege of granted status, but that wrought from daily toil and the struggle of personalities.

This diaspora of friends – this Thomaspora – encircles our world, from Bavaria, to sunny California, London and the English Midlands, Rome, once again war-torn Lebanon and here in Singapore; it extends beyond our terrestial form, extending to envelop the Heavens.

It sometimes feels as if I am an expatriate, distanced and disentangled from these fellow creatures, my fellow creatures, and I am longing for a moment when time can be halted and space compressed, when this circle can surround me again.

Alas, such content is not uncommon. Warwick University’s Sociology department is now an identity theory-ridden morass of statistical analysis, gender, gender, gender and rational choice study. What follows is a random sample of recent Ph.D. research.

An Analysis of the Motivations and Barriers to UK HE Experienced by African Caribbean Women and Men

Women’s Experiences of Urinary Incontinence

A sociology of bioprospecting and biopiracy

Cultural Constructions of Death in the Irish Catholic Community in Britain

The medicalisation of women’s sexual problems

BAH.

Further reading:

No more Universities

Corpse of the University

The Fast and the Menshevik
From Russia With Acerbic Diatribes
Dirty Trotsky
The Man Who Would Be People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs
The Matrix: Permanent Revolutions
Trotskynator 2: Trotsky Day
Communist Firebrands of the Caribbean
Run Leon Run (original title: Leon Rennt)
Leon Trotsky and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Trotsky vs. Mechatrotsky

That’s a lovely bunch of funny-ness.

Activity on this site will re-commence shortly. In the meantime, here’s a fun George Dubya site: Do a Dick, scare yourself, listen to what George Dubya might say. Visit this site.

That most personal, yet at once eternal, moment took place as if an ethereal, passing intangible took form. This fleetingness that materialized as the doors of the elevator opened into the rabid workaday morning decided to cling on to my company, much as a hungry kitten would. I immediately recognized this creature, of course, for who it was: that half of me that longed to rid itself of this island nation’s hold.

Long confined in expectancy, it, too, at last has a birth-time and date: Friday, 16th December, 2005, close to a quarter to 8. I wonder if the birthing of this originary instant, full of wishes and claims, would be better imprinted according to where longs for; in that case, and to be precise, it properly occurred late one Thursday afternoon (Pacific Time).

So now I scheme for my other half’s well-being: that it will survive its non-descript birth to become the person that I had hoped to fashion of myself, much as any well-intentioned paternal being aims at perfecting the specimen. Much as how popular Darwinism understands itself.

This island has been a home of sorts for four adult years, a relationship longer than any other I’ve developed with any random stack of bricks, in any town, country, region or continent; we have endured each other as would co-workers in a firm – professionally, which is hardly the basis for a symbiotic relationship at the heart of a home, or of any “belonging”. It is (far too readily) possible and necessary to write venomously of this place; to dispense all pretense of balance or fairness, and instead write in beautifully sadistic tones, with full sincerity, of soul-numbing barrenness.