You know you've hit writer's block when...

...you consume a pint of Guinness and six Barthelme short stories for lunch, and you still can't find the inspiration to write.

In other news, can I just say that I feel personally betrayed by Capitalism. What's the point of free enterprise if you can't get proper service even if you're willing to pay for it? Thrice in the last week I've ordered things on 'expedited' delivery, only to receive apologies and a refund when they didn't arrive by the agreed deadline (NOTE to vendors: I don't want a @#%&!ng refund, I want my shipment!!).

I don't understand why Capitalism is doing this to me, after all that we've been through the years. Can it be she finally found out about by affair with Marxism in college? Is this her way of taking revenge?

Joblessness redefined

Ron
is gone
but the con
goes on

- placard at Anti-Scientology demonstration outside the Church of Scientology, Minneapolis.

Personally, I have no use for scientology (or any other organized system of faith), but I can't help thinking that organizing a demonstration against it, complete with placards and masks and loudspeaker and soap bubbles (don't ask!) is overkill. One protests evil, not silliness.

Oh, and as the more lynx-eyed among you have already noticed, I've bid farewell to Philadelphia and moved to Minneapolis, where I'm currently busy assembling furniture (correction: trying to assemble furniture) and stocking my kitchen and generally being depressingly domestic. Will return to blogging once I've managed to wrestle myself back to civilization.

Betrayal

He would have been dismayed by the betrayal if he hadn't suspected it all along. Which is not to say it didn't surprise him, but only in the way that one is surprised by the inevitable arrival of a long-lost brother bearing an unexpected gift. Not that the traitor in this instance was his brother, or indeed, a relation of any sort, which is what made the betrayal so puzzling, because why pretend allegiance to someone whom you owe nothing? So perhaps there was something the traitor owed, or thought he owed. Had he helped the traitor in some way, done him some unconscious kindness, the burden of which had now caused him to snap? It was possible. And should he then forgive him, or choose reprisal, even vengeance, as a way of balancing things out? Would it be more of a penalty to betray him in turn, or to ensure his guilt by refusing to betray him? And wasn't this calculation itself a betrayal? What were the ethics of mirrors? Was it possible to observe oneself in a moral stance?

Eisoptrophobia

The fear that cannot face itself.

Amazon

...now has copies of etudes for sale.

Just so you know.

Something

Measure the magnitude of an injustice by the smallness of what counts as a triumph.

Not a victory, then, but an achievement, a giving way.

How obscene to have to celebrate this; to have to celebrate the fact that having sex with someone you love no longer makes you a criminal.

And for that reason alone, how necessary to celebrate it.

It's good to know that India has finally arrived in the 20th century. Here's hoping it doesn't take till 2109 to get to the 21st.

That's Dr. Falstaff to you

5 years

= STATA + JSTOR + rewrites + conference presentations + the annual caffeine output of a medium-sized Colombian plantation

= 49,000 words + 300 references + 24 tables

= 15 slides + 1 hour defense

= 1 dissertation, signed and delivered.

And it's barely lunchtime.

Four years

Depressing thought # 1461: This blog has now lasted longer than any relationship I've been in.