While submitting something for McSweeney’s site, I chanced upon this entry, entitled “Versions of Well-Known Films in Which the Protagonist Has Been Replaced With Leon Trotsky”, by Erick Peterson

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.

I wonder what goes on in the mind of a publisher when sizing up evaluating a book proposal. Wit? Market segmentation? TV appeal? Jerry Springer potential? Pitch to the pained population?

Riquette Hofstein’s Grow Hair Fast: 7 Steps to a New Head of Hair in 90 Days begins in dramatic fashion with cinematographic intent:

In the summer of 1991, high in the Tyrolean Alps of Northern Italy, a team of archeologists and other scientists retrieved the preserved body of a man buried in the glacial fields

I bet Riquette can almost smell Hollywood beckoning. Almost, but not quite.

previous winners:

dumb book of the week iii
dumb book of the week ii
dumb book of the week i

So many books is Gabriel Zaid’s macro-history of the book. What it lacks in fluidity, it compensates with ample anecdotal antibiotics to cure curiousity of Biblical proportions. It prompted me to dash to the care of dusty tomes, and assuage a “to be read” shelf which at time of writing includes two Eco novels, the Alliez book (The signature of the world), Benjamin’s Arcades project and O’Donnell’s Augustine biography. Time, therefore, to itemise these great years of neglect, a testament to perennial regret. To that end, and with the year’s end in sight, what better way than to compile a set of resolutions for the coming year.

the basics:

The meagre collection of books that make up my so-called library is slowly inching its way pass the three digit mark. I remember a time when reading and book buying took place within some discernible framework. Those good ol’ days were marked by guidelines (reading lists, for example), coherent themes plucked from courses or degree programmes and corollary interests. These days, these uncomfortable, independent days know neither rhyme or reason. Therein lies a brutal laxtity.

The amazingly charged LargeHeartedBoy, however, has diligently filled the past 2 years with a “52 books, 52 weeks” column. What better way to fight this much maligned marginalisation? Not only that, but what if the reading is threaded, each leading seamlessly to another? In this way, the end book of 2006, though it will be of no particular significance as it is a mere transitory point on the great chain of Reading, will be predetermined. This makes for an unusually heavy choice of starting point.

books that missed their time:

Candidates, alas, cannot come from this long, impossible list which consist of Don Quioxte, Wuthering Heights, Lolita, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Crime and Punishment, Remembrance of Things Past, and Ulysses. This is my unhappy list of lost chances, and missed milestones. A Lolita not read in one’s teen years, or Crime and Punishment passed over during college days, cannot be readily re-claimed in the mid-way of one’s life.

Perhaps Homeric Moments, Eva Brann’s introductory literary landscaping of the Greek world? The symbolism of such a beginning should not be lost. A more respectable point of departure must surely be (Etonian) Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World: an Epic history from Homer to Hadrian; but will I survive its 700 pages and live to tell its tale? Decisions, decisions. See reviews of The Classical World in The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Church Times and The Independent. Hmmm, reviews dampen the enthusiasm of delving into the relatively unknown. Or will Harold Bloom’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? prove to be too weighty a first step? (NPR’s review).

Nevermind, a title will be decided upon and its review will appear here on the first Sunday of the year. Any suggestions?

Look, this isn’t as easy as you think. I have to trawl through Amazon’s amazing list of amazing lists to dredge this stuff up. This week’s award goes to Laura Schlessinger’s
The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.

For redress, see Corpus Argumenti Lauretti.

And dammit, why come up with “lisp” to describe the condition? Is this some sort of etymological wit?

McSweeney’s is at it again. Here are the “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”, according to Brendon Lloyd:

1. Skiing
2. Yachting
3. Snorkeling
4. Golf
5. Polo
6. Dinner parties
7. Shopping

Go on, go there.

Here is my contribution: “Key phrases highlighted in recent negotiation seminar”:

1. Difficult conversations
2. conflict management
3. win-win
4. worsen their alternatives
5. position of strength
6. Getting to “yes”

This week’s prize goes to Joseph Jenkins for The Humanure Handbook This is marked at $16.49. No, that’s the amount you have to pay.

We know how bibliophiles are a little compulsive - as in obsessive compulsive - so Jim Spalding’s library project is a curse. Library Thing is a social cataloguing experience; essentially, it allows the average compulsive amongst us to catalogue our most noble of extravagances and, what’s more, with its built-in cross-referencing tool, lets OCDs / bibliophiles with similar interests touch one another in a non-literal manner.

For more, visit Library Thing. Want to browse my library? Check out my catalogue. Now you know. That way, when I’m dead famous, or famous and dead, or famous from my death, or dead because of my fame, and you guys are trying to figure out whether this or the other book influenced this or the other thought, just flick through my annotated library and all will be revealed.

I feel a certain sadness for librarything.com - one day soon, I sense Tim (the owner and developer of librarything.com) will soon make his fortune by selling out his “invention” to the boys over at Amazon. Don’t do it.

I’m going to Hell anyway, so this should merely accelerate the process.

My first nomination for the newly inaugurated “Dumb Book Concept of the Week” award goes to Don Colbert (and his agent) for The What Would Jesus Eat Cookbook. Don, if you’re looking to corner the lucrative Far Right Christian Fundamentalist reading market, you’re on the way to fame and fortune.

Favourite cities and why

Berlin: on Giesebrechtstraße, just off Kurfürstendamm. The cafe, newsagent’s, pub and cinema. Bookshop (note: singular) and restaurants. All lovely. I recently discovered that the this little street had quite a historical significance. The Nazi Party’s whorehouse was located 2 doors away from where I lived.

London: Truth be told, I’ve never actually lived in London for a meaningfully long duration, but there is a certain warmth in its blanket of anonymity.

Oxford: off Iffley Fields. Hailstorms in late April, endlessly re-cycled bicycles, truth seekers galore.

Moscow: along Ulitsa Gubkina. Vodka, ice and snow, crime, corruption, love. Hundreds of men go missing during the winter, only to be uncovered by the snow’s thawing in the Spring, dead where they fell, lulled and warmed with drink.

Royal Leamington Spa: inside the pub. I jest: Leamington is and can only ever be considered a mere town. Physically flat and linear, socially segregated, culturally vacuous, uniformly green. Christ.

Sentosa: I will soon be able to experience what it means to live on an island off an island. Singapore is hardly a city worth its name, but perhaps Sentosa can redeem its sibling. Splendid.

I hope New York will shoot to the top of this list.