Why Combray?

Proust and I aren't getting along. Is this supposed to be funny? charming? acute?

And so I no longer used to go into the little sitting-room (now kept shut) of my uncle Adolphe; instead, after hanging about on the outskirts of the back-kitchen until Françoise appeared on its threshold and announced: “I am going to let the kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take up the hot water; it is time I went off to Mme. Octave,” I would then decide to go indoors, and would go straight upstairs to my room to read. The kitchen-maid was an abstract personality, a permanent institution to which an invariable set of attributes assured a sort of fixity and continuity and identity throughout the long series of transitory human shapes in which that personality was incarnate; for we never found the same girl there two years running. In the year in which we ate such quantities of asparagus, the kitchen-maid whose duty it was to dress them was a poor sickly creature, some way ’gone’ in pregnancy when we arrived at Combray for Easter, and it was indeed surprising that Françoise allowed her to run so many errands in the town and to do so much work in the house, for she was beginning to find a difficulty in bearing before her the mysterious casket, fuller and larger every day, whose splendid outline could be detected through the folds of her ample smocks. These last recalled the cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of the allegorical figures in his paintings, of which M. Swann had given me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: “Well, how goes it with Giotto’s Charity?”

Palm beach brings out the best in writers

Money is cheap on the Gold Coast, and there is a lot of it floating around. A thirteen-year-old boy recently found a million dollars' worth of big, finely cut diamonds in a brown bag on the railroad tracks near Hollywood. His aunt made him turn in the loot, but nobody claimed it, and his neighbors called him a fool. Which was true. There is no place for Horatio Algers down her on the Gold Coast; hard work and clean living will get you a bag of potato chips and a weekend job scraping scum off the hull of your neighbor's new Cigarette boat.

Hunter s. Thompson

"The drama of diamonds! Yes, diamonds are a girl's best friend... This exquisite necklace! A unison of noble gems. Yours for a mere - $250,000."
This was the seasonal Gucci party, given at the Gucci arcade and fronted by Gucci himself (or, rather, by 'Doctor Aldo Gucci' himself. 'Doctor': don't you love it?) Gucci himself is a resplendently handsome maniac with operatic manners and impossible English. 'Let us give thanks that God has forgiven this evening' and so on. Swanky girls and jinking pretty-boys modeled the Doc's latest creations. Gucci then repaired to the minstrel's gallery and, with a tambourine in one hand and a microphone in the other, actually mimed to the songs being played be the sedative pop group behind him.

Martin Amis

Six Feet Under loses its realism

During the first season of Six Feet Under a few of the characters sit down to watch TV. There's a 1980's sitcom on (Family Ties, The Cosby Show?) and it was a jarring moment. There wasn't much of the old show on but it brought back to memory how nothing happened on thoses shows- they were endlessly repeating interactions between set characters.
I'm nearly through with the fourth season and the show has grown weaker. The editors have never wanted a scene longer than a minute which not only makes me feel babied but decreases the impact of major scenes. There was an episode where everything was building towards a dinner of conflicts. Schedules were being made, people were taking themselves on and off the list, there was planning and worrying. People sat down, I imagined the ways it could blow up and ... it was over.
The characters' motivations are no longer clear which make them hard to identify with. After his wife's death Nate becomes depressed, hostile, irresponsible and crazed and then, after burying his wife, a smiling saint. If I had heard these events would happen to him I would have predicted neither of these transformations.

People I saw today

I saw a new bakery, Babycakes, in the neighborhood and decided to go in. As I entered a small boy who was positioned adjacent to the door, made a move to go under me. I raised my leg to block him before remembering that this was not a cat or a dog- that he would not immediately dart into traffic or run away.

In midtown there was a person driving a bicycle rickshaw wearing a Chucky mask. It had the static look of masks but was tight on his face making the effect a bit stronger.

Chopping up our online selves

I have a photo website which isn't linked with this and computer one which is. I've thought about linking them up so that the 2 readers of this site can find the other one and the three readers there can... There might also be unforseen ways in which the two interact.
The problem is that the more that I combine unrelated things the only thing that links them is the person. If there is a site of only photos, it is more straightforward to view them without thinking about who took them than if there is a book review below them.
The websites that I like, even if they are only by one person, do not feature that person. This reminds me that nearly every song I listen to is by a band not a musician. If it is by a single person then they tend to have renamed themselves (ie Mountain Goats).
If reading a more personal one in the first few sentences not only are you trying to answer what it's about but whether it is of value to you. One of the reasons that having a site be about something specific is that there is a known value.
The idea of the site also makes writer's focus clear. If he is evaluating a painting the first sentence may show the thesis. This is takes more work when the entry is about someones travels in Bangladesh.

Congrats

Two of my friends just got some major press
Christian's Seattle Monorail project on boinboing
Susan Margolis made it into my hometown paper

Cleaning

In between the pages of my new copy of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House are two pistachio shells which I'm using as bookmarks while I look up what a "backsplash" is on the web. From the context, I'm fairly sure that it is not the type of thing that happens while swimming toward the edge of a pool. It is some type of furniture.
Last night I was variously described as an "animal", a "dog", and a "monkey" due to some other events involving pistachio shells and whatnot. So the natural reasoning might be that I'm reading this because the book was thrown at me.
Instead I ordered it, after reading about it on Cool Tools. My hopes were that after understanding the science of keeping house, I might be more willing to do it. At the least it is always interesting to be introduced to a new world.

This is probably a subject for another time...
The subtitle of the book irks me because besides being a cliche the phrase "art and science" is based on a poor conception of science. It suggets that science is rigid list of steps that needs to be tempered with art.
Nearly every area of science is declared more "art than science". "Up until now visualizing gene transcripts has been more art than science,(link)" "Scientists might add one foreign gene to an organism to produce a drug like insulin. The technique is more art than science given the brute trial-and-error...(link)." But this is what practicing science is, it has to grapple with uncertainty.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050829/pf/nbt0905-1037_pf.html