Eight months along...

Having a great deal of genetic material in common with me doesn't guarantee you'll be a ditz, but goddamn if it doesn't seem to be a good indicator. Last night, after condo elections, I talked to my older brother for the first time in weeks. "I just wanted to know if you liked the mix tape I sent you."

"I never got any mix tape."

"I sent it to you over a month ago!"

"Did you send it to my old address?"

[silence on phone connoting horrible moment of realisation]

Next time, I'm sending out change-of-address cards. Not to my friends--they all seem to have adjusted to my move without any trouble. Only to family.

Poll time!

You have my personal guarantee that this survey is not one whit more dumbass than the last ten surveys that you have completed and posted in your journal. (If this comes as cold comfort, well, then you have only yourself to blame, don't you?) My answers will follow at the end of the day.

1. What is your favourite maritime empire?
2. How many people died in the city you were born the year that you were born there?
3. Name a song you hate. Now, compose a question to which the word or phrase that makes up the song title supplies a misleading answer. Post it.
4. Look at the sole of your shoe. If there is any writing there, transcribe it into rot13 and post it.
5. The last offensive joke that you laughed at victimised which minority group?
6. How many different forms of pasta can you name? [No need to list them individually if the answer is fewer than 14.]
7. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help, but you're not helping. Why is that?
8. Take the house number of the first street address you can recall having lived at, multiply it by the number of stories in the house and divide by the total number of legs for all chordates acknowledged to be living with you at the time. Represent the result in a non-decimal scale of numerical notation of your choice.
9. If you were a cell component, which one would you be and why?
10. Name three parts of your body that have ever been shaved.

Dead trees reborn

Well, my own answers to the survey I posted (have you answered it yet?) will just have to wait since I need to meet my hubby soon and I just remembered an entry that I wanted to do in honour of St. George's Day or. (For explanations, see last year's entry.) This is not a list of favourites or classics or recommendations, it is simply a roundup of--

Books I Plan to Read Again

• Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God


• Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō The Makioka Sisters (細雪, English trans.)


• Ende, Michael Der unendliche Geschichte


• Tolkien, J.R.R. Lord of the Rings (trilogy)


• Eco, Umberto Foucault's Pendulum (Il pendolo di Foucault, English trans.)


• Simmons, Dan Hyperion


• Luo Guanzhong The Three Kingdoms (三國志演義, English trans.)

I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now.

A thousand deceptive words

I haven't been paying any attention to quarters lately. The commemorative ones have lost their novelty value and--as febrile laments--have been getting fuglier lately. If not for his pointer, I wouldn't have even realised that Missouri's is out.

My heart sank when I saw it. No, it is isn't as unattractive as some (though, granted, Wisconsin sets a pretty gosh darn low bar), but you know what I almost invariably hear from friends seeing the Arch for the first time?

"But it doesn't go across the river."

It does no good to point out that it's the Gateway to the West and the Mississippi runs southwards. They've formed in their mind's eye an image of a glittering span connecting the banks of a mile-wide expanse of flowing water (the Big Muddy is nowhere near a mile wide at St. Louis, spawning the most common second reaction of disappointment: "It's not that big.") and the reality of a less-than-200-metre-wide metal arch on a grassy knoll can only be a letdown. And this happens in a world where there are no prominent images of a river-spanning arch. Seriously, anyone who forms this false conception does so in spite of a huge body of images which make it absolutely plain how the arch fits into the skyline of the city, with both feet firmly planted on the Missouri side.

Not any longer. With this misleading image of explorers heading bravely into an geographically-impossible anachronism (or perhaps an accurate depiction of weekend frontier recreationists tooling around on a slough in the Metro East?) burning holes in the pockets of children across the country, the Great Unwashed can be forgiven for visualising the Gateway Arch as a taller, shinier Eads Bridge. For that reason alone, I will never forgive its designers.