You know you’re a successful DJ when nightclubs you’re not booked for put you down as a headliner on their New Year’s Eve party advertisements. This has happened to one of my oldest friends this year. I just got the clarification mail and was deeply entertained. Happy New Year, everyone! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!
When I ran across this little red book in a used bookshop in Saskatoon last summer, I snapped it up for one reason and one reason alone: because I remembered the title from this post by Adrian over at mssv.net. Now, if you look at the post I just linked above, you’ll see that the book is, in fact, a kind of puzzle book. After I finished it, I had a sense — a very strong sense of it, one which Pullman works very hard to establish — that there was much more to the book than just the tale …
Award-winning author Philip Pullman used to be a teacher, I discovered in this interview. And he said something very interesting about classroom dynamics: It took him a while to work out how to tame a class. ‘You mustn’t try to be the most popular. That’s not your role. The way to control a class is to get the chief girl, or chief boy, interested in what you’ve got to say. Everyone else will follow them.’ After a few years he begin to notice something. Though every child was different, each class was more or less the same, with roles to …
That’s what Jodi’s reporting. And I say, good riddance. It’s not just that TOIEC doesn’t test real ability; it’s also that TOEIC sidetracks people from trying to learn to understand English, into memorizing ridiculous obscure grammar points and, worse, memorizing methodologies designed to maximize correct answers on TOEIC tests through absolutely inane grammatical analysis of the questions. Yes, really. Ask Lime if you don’t believe me. Or the people I work with, who can tell you horror stories about TOEIC preparation book questions that make absolutely no sense. Me, I just wonder how anyone convinced so many people to accept …
I sit down alone with myself and think over the things I should have done, the things I have done, the things I wish I hadn’t done, the things I want to do. I do this around this time every year, a cup of coffee in one hand, a pencil for doodling in the other. The doodling has nothing to do with memories, regrets, or hopes. It’s just something to do with my hands while I think. I’m not going to write all of my reflections here, because what I think is more important is the trend of the thing.
Dear Psycho Who Lives Upstairs in Apartment 601, Please stop yelling at the woman you live with. You sound mentally ill, and it’s obviously not changing her mind anyway. Seriously, sometimes in the hall I hear your voice and without pause a straitjacket comes to mind. Please stop stomping around. It’s really, really annoying me. Please stop this habit of starting loud, nasty fights late at night. If you have to fight, do it in the daytime. Please stop being so damned psychotic. Get help. Surely you don’t think screaming, throwing things, and freaking out once a week, on Thursdays, …
I’ve decided I simply must get all of the Hamiet Bluiett Baritone Nation albums. This page has some audio samples that finally convinced me that I need CDs in which the majority of the band is playing baritone saxes. (More samples of another Baritone Nation CD here.) This is some heavy stuff. I like it. I shall have to order these or something, since I doubt any music shop will have ’em just sitting on the shelf.
For those who’ve read Greg Egan‘s marvellous short story “Mitochondrial Eve”, I’ve got an old news report for you! Check this out: it seems that studies apparently show a high level of correlation between patrilineal surnames and patrilineal Y-chromosomes, meaning that at least in Britain, marital infidelity resulting in illegitemate conceptions may have been far less common than previously believed, at least in the last millennium. And just as Y-chromosomes can be used within men, mitochondrial DNA can be used to check matrilineal genetic inheritance. They’re even thinking of starting a business for people who want to check out their …
It is impossible to read this book without a sense of looming doom faced by all the Russians you’re reading about. The first bit of text visible on the cover of this book reads, HOW RUSSIA LOST THE PACIFIC TO THE JAPANESE, and from that line onward, you know that the people Pleshakov is writing about are going to fail. How sad it is to watch them set out on their journey in inadequate ships, following ridiculous commands, navigating a hostile political climate as threatening as the ocean itself — and sometimes moreso — and all the while, steaming Eastward …
I’m starting to feel a little silly including these short childrens’ books on my Lunar New Year readings list, but (a) I wanted to create a log of all the books I read in the Lunar Year from 2005-2006, and (b) I really do want to achieve my goal of reading 50 books in that time. Besides, if Ezra Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos counts as only one book, and if I am not going to count all the supporting texts I’ve read chunks of in my study of it, then the kids’ books are, to my mind, not …