Posted 9:27 PM by Gene

On National Iraqi Appeasement Day sponsored by Your Local Stalinist Sympathizers (also known as A.N.S.W.E.R.), The Telegraph is reporting that the UN weapons inspectors have uncovered evidence that Saddam's henchmen are developing a nuclear-weapons program. Figures.

Posted 7:44 PM by Gene

The NFL conference championships are tomorrow, and the Super Bowl's the following week, and all I can think of is Chevy Chase: Greedy owners blackmailing spineless mayors into building debt-laden stadiums so they can be at the top of the Forbes owner's list (I OWN THE NFL'S MOST VALUABLE FRANCHISE AND YOU DON'T!!!!!); greedy players who'll get unimaginable sums and tank the following year (I MAKE $12 MILLION A YEAR AND YOU DON'T!!!!!); greedy sponsors esconced in luxury boxes and ready to pounce on unsuspecting subordinates the next day (I WAS AT THE SUPER BOWL AND YOU WEREN'T!!!!!), greedy fans who think they're watching something "historic" and will never shut up (DITTO!!!!!). Chevy Chase (the phenomenon, not the man) has sucked the joy out of sports, no doubt the reason TV ratings for most of them are down, save the NFL (the immovable force) and any tournament Tiger's in (the irresistible object). Today I was watching Disney Sports's (pardon, ABC's) broadcast of the Duke-Maryland game from the new Comcast Center at College Park and with Dick Vitale yelling I could only imagine the tax breaks. It's a sorry thing when sports comes to this.

Living in Philadelphia I dread what might happen if the Iggles win the Super Bowl. Fortunately the game's on a Sunday night, and Monday's need for work should hold down the revels.

There is a silver lining to this: Hardly anybody outside the U.S. cares about the Super Bowl. Of course, hardly anybody in the U.S. cares about professional soccer. Given the sport's hooliganism abroad I say that's a good thing.

Posted 6:28 PM by Gene

The latest Atlantic Monthly has a shrewd review by the novelist Thomas Mallon of two examples of the conundrum modern fiction is in: The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers (a "critically acclaimed" author I'd never heard of before), filled with "a kind of automatic junk writing":

When is the zero of change, the spot in time when time begins? Not the big bang, or even the little one. Not when you learn to count your first tune [?]. Not that first now that twists back on itself. All moments start from the one when you see how they all must end.

and the cutesy-pie Updike clone Nicholson Baker, who writes in A Box of Matches about nothing. Books like these, with their fancy language and their disconnection to life, explain why Tom Wolfe mistakenly felt news hacks could solve fiction's ills. If the walking dead keep disgorging novels, what's the hope for literature? (It's no accident this same magazine ran that tantrum about Don DeLillo & Co.)

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

That thing above is my name -- well, my pen name; I've adopted it for a satiric novel that will never be published. I live alone in Philadelphia (not entirely by choice, on either count) with my cat, whose name is formally Ginger, but whom I call "Sweetie." That's all for me; if you want to learn about someone's private life, I suggest you log on to Andrew Sullivan. I'll stick with politics and culture, typing on in the forlorn desire to be read, knowing that blogging is little more than an electronic Vantage Press without the bills, save for the monthly tithe to the ISP. I can only hope -- not to cut through the clutter, that's impossible; but for someone to stumble over my idle musings, and at least think I'm intelligent, though on the evidence of my life thus far I'd say I'm a born fool.