Robert > Recent Status Updates

The Notebook (not that Notebook): Extremely fucked up and brutal novel about young twin brothers growing up in small town Hungary during World War 2. Untrustworthy language, and language as an enemy, with the dictionary as the guide are big themes of The Notebook. Makes me want to re-read The Illiterate. Kind of feeling bad for recommending my friend read this messed up book for a books podcast.

"On Nanjing Road, Avenue Joffre, and other commercial streets, Bing was surprised to see newly arrived American soldiers grabbing the arm shafts of rickshaws and taking their drivers for rides yelling, 'Yahoo!' Ah Mei reported that this strange ritual was repeated with nearly every fresh batch of Yankees, who paid rickshaw drivers unheard-of sums for the privilege of pulling them.

"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit " would be a fitting epigram for this book. I'm not even kidding. I'm actually kind of stunned at how much that dril tweet actually understood the thinking Butler writes about in this book.

I've long thought that Nestor Makhno would be a great action movie figure, and this comic illustrates all of the advantages and pitfalls of such treatment. This book is a lot of fun, but it's also pretty stupid. I was hoping for way more about my fave anarchist pretty-boy, Fedir Schus.

A lot of mentions of fortifications, especially field fortifications. The earlier works (e.g. The Art of War) often referred to "feudal lords" as if they were a part of the terrain.

2 page end note about the historicity of Wu Tzu

Realizing that agent Cooper's outlines his methods (in the second episode of Twin Peaks) in a similar way to Sun Tzu.

I like how the word "Shih" (勢) has a 4-page long endnote explaining its usage and meaning in Sun Tzu's Art of War. Also, I think I like Pinyin better than Wade-Giles.

The ancients loved their lists: the five grains, the five weapons, the six animals, etc...

King Wu's constant response of "Excellent" to T'ai Kung's suggestions/lectures makes me wonder if he is actually Bill and/or Ted transported from the Future and improbably set up as a king in Early Chou era ancient China. Meanwhile, T'ai Kung's list of army equipment that the army needs reads like some sort of ancient Dept of Defense wish-list.

The instructions for how to subvert a state in T'ai Kung's Six Secret Teachings (under Martial Secret Teachings) could be a general description of the current politics of the United States.

another should-be Covid isolation classic. I often think about what it's like to go through life barely able to keep my eyes open (either from drugs or organic exhaustion). I think of this as people almost run me over in the cross walk & figure a lot of people are driving in this state. I think this book really takes me behind the heavy heavy eyelids of America.

"There was no sadness or nostalgia, only disgust that I'd wasted so much time on unnecessary labor when I could have been sleeping & feeling nothing."

not a great spot to be reading when laid up with Covid-19. Johnson is sick, miserable, & at the mercy of 18th century European medicine. Johnson wrote a very detailed description of his stroke symptoms, & I couldn't help but think of all of the treatments we have today for strokes. I hear how you have to treat a stroke early, but in Johnson's day it didn't really matter, since there was no hospital as we know it.

no better book to read while isolating with covid

some of these essays get pretty conceptual.

The Nightmare on Elm Street Essay has some really interesting ideas about the movie.

Can't help but like the dad, despite how messed up he is.

Hated parking lots before it was cool.

Collection of essays by queer writers about what various horror movies mean to them, with queer-oriented analysis or interpretations of the featured works. Many of the essays are part-memoir.

Complains about gentrification before it was cool. Her main problem with it is that the wealthier people & uses crowd out the necessary economic diversity that is required for a healthy neighborhood economy.

Mostly about Thelonious Monk's personality, his relationship with Jazz Baroness Nica, & the milieu of the New York jazz scene of the 40s-60s.

fell asleep for a few minutes there

Really making me want to play some pinball.

The discussion of different uses on a residential street, including mortuaries, makes me think about what Jacobs would say about the setting of Bob's Burgers.

Love the pinball grawlix Chad uses.

The economic relationships between the ages of properties & affordability of rents were considerably changed by the early 2000s if not earlier. I wish the old-ass buildings in my neighborhood had cheaper rents!

Discussion of districts perversely makes me think of the latest installment in the Civilization computer game series. The game's conception of urban planning is pretty much opposite of Jacobs's. I wonder how much the level of community organizing has changed in major cities of the U.S. since Jacobs's time.

I like her recommendation that a sidewalk needs to be 30ft wide & have shade trees between the sidewalk & the street, & that the 30 ft figure comes from the amount of room needed to accommodate both a game of double dutch, & passerby.