Some of you might know that one of my pet peeves is typographical errors in displayed advertising material (e.g. an awning over a greasy joint saying "Delicious burger's"). Don't even get me started on the sign in the pub this weekend advertising "Cristmas specials". Latest example observed on the little signs on every table in the cafeteria:
Nico received the following email from his Aussie cousin when he invited him down to the coast for the weekend. With five of us on the case we managed to eventually decode it:
Pretty banged up today, dropped 200 pounds last night. Ouch. [Interpretation A: had a substantial amount of body-mass carved off and is left in serious physical pain. Interpretation B: Had an expensive night out and is left without much cash.]
Surf sounds promising, I might have to make an appearance. [pretty straightforward]
I'll just need to find a lazy hunge to make it. Got a spare steamer?
This last, of course, is where it went into the woods. Turns out a hunge is £100, so he needs to scratch together some dough to make it down the coast. Finally, a steamer is a wetsuit. Fair enough when you have the internet at your disposal, but how the hell are you meant to carry on a conversation?
I picked up a copy of Deathly Hallows today at a Border's in Seattle. I was there a little after 9AM, so there wasn't much of a crowd (the die-hards having shown up at midnight the night befoer). It was still weird, however, to see everybody in the queue hold the same 800 page book. Even more interesting was seeing how different people reacted to having it in their hands. Many people were reading the first chapter whilst waiting to pay, and more than a few were reading the ending. In fact, I had to go to a different checkout than I had originally planned, because a woman and her daughter were discussing the ending while in the queue (pretty obnoxious — literally everyone else here is buying the same damn book that you're ruining, lady).
I then joined the clusters of other people sitting out on the patio reading a couple of chapters and enjoying a Starbuck's coffee.
I touched down at Heathrow at about 7AM yesterday after a rejuvenating three week trip all over the USA (about which more later, in text and photographs). I got back to my flat at half eight with every intention of a quick shower, a hot pot of coffee, and a brisk walk to work to try to head jetlag off at the pass. I had even tried to take advantage of my Mystery Hunt all-nighters to slingshot past jetlag and straight into productivity.
Unfortunately I made a schoolboy error and decide to lie down "for a nap". The next thing I knew it was 6PM and I had suffered a double-whammy — jetlag along with waking up at exactly the wrong time of day. While this is unfortunate in light of all the work I should've been doing, it did give me an opportunity to continue enjoying the novel I had started on the flight across the Atlantic: Freddy and Fredericka.
Mark Helprin's latest novel is a farcical story about the Prince and Princess of Wales being sent to reclaim the wayward American colonies to prove their worthiness to inherit the British crown. I'm only halfway through, but already this book is on the cusp of surpassing Memoir from Antproof Case as Helprin's best comedy; I have several times had to actually put the book down while enjoying a full belly laugh — quite a feat for a book! I'm not sure how much my enjoyment was enriched by being so jetlag-addled, but what moved me to write about it isn't even the humour in the story.
While in Seattle at the beginning of this year Dave commented on how often I complained about living in the UK. I've thought about it a lot since, and my only resolution for 2007 is to do a better job of enjoying my life here and to appreciate the incredible opportunity I've been given before it is too late. Thus, I have been particularly pensive of late about the experience of an American living in England, which made Freddy and Fredericka a godsend.
Helprin delivers nearly nonstop gems of observation of both English and American life that are hysterically funny and heart-achingly accurate. This book is absolutely written for people who have lived in both places, and I am especially tickled when I think that Helprin's observations of the UK must have been formed principally when he was...a graduated student at Oxford. Beyond merely satirizing, however, Helprin strives to explain both the differences and the familiarity of these historical nation-relatives. People often ask me to explain the difference between living in America and England and I always evade, explaining that it is hard to put into words. That is what makes great writing — and all art: the courage to show someone else precisely how you feel. In my time of need, a time when I must come to terms with my adopted country and my home, Helprin is there for me again like an old friend.
And the novel has so much more to offer, including what is already shaping up to possibly be his best love story. While all of his novels feature love stories to some extent, they never seem to focus on them, instead centering on one man's journey. Freddy and Fredericka, on the other hand, is truly the story of both titular characters, and the author reserves some spectacular language for describing their developing relationship.
I'm only halfway through this one, but I can tell I'll be rereading it soon.
You know what really grinds my gears? People using 'u' in email instead of 'you' (or the even more ridiculous 'ur' which just reminds of me ancient Sumeria). I tend to be pretty particular about using punctuation and complete sentences in my email (you're all shocked, I know) but I usually don't care about people who take shortcuts. Except for 'u'; for whatever reason it just sticks in my craw.
And now you know.
The style of Mark Helprin's imagination is simultaneously so distinct and so concomitant to my own that it has always attracted me to his writing since the first time, many years ago, that I read A Soldier of the Great War. I've read so much of his work now (most of it more than once) that his narrational voice is like an old friend to me now. I'm finally endeavouring to read Winter's Tale in its entirety, and as I was reading it last night I was reminded for some reason of one of the short stories in The Pacific, one of his collections.
When I woke up this morning, I happened to see The Pacific on my bookshelf, so I picked it up to flick through the pages, without really intending to read anything. I couldn't help but to read the beginning of my favourite of all his short stories, Monday. I'm not going to give any particular preamble or description of the story, because it is a short story in the best sense of the phrase: perfectly contained, trimmed free of all surplusage. A novel can live with some excess fat - indeed it requires it to keep the story alive for 500 pages - but a good short story is boiled down to the essentials, leaving only the necessary muscle and bone to tell the tale. So all I'll say is that in this case Helprin manages to capture the feelings of an entire nation, but more importantly my own feelings about that particular time in the past. Many artists lunge at this goal, but few succeed.
At any rate, you should read Monday, and The Pacific in general.
For those of you (like me) who don't have time to read the tome released by the 9/11 Commission, may I recommend the fabulous comic book version by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón. Required reading for any well-informed American.
Several people have recommended Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country to me recently and it seemed especially appropriate since I'm travelling to Australia in a couple of weeks. I spent a frustrating afternoon at Border's in Oxford looking for it, but couldn't find it among Bryson's other titles and the store computer had no record of it. The guy helping me said, "We've got something called Down Under, could that be it?"
"Nah," I replied, "the title definitely has 'sunburned country' somewhere in it. Thanks, though."
Of course, I realised on the bus home that In a Sunburned Country is of course published as Down Under in the UK. So a few days later than otherwise might have been the case, I acquired a copy and read it, mostly in the course of one very pleasurable rainy Saturday.
The only one of Bryson's other books I've read is A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is excellent, but, I think, slightly out of his forte. Down Under, on the other hand, is right in his wheelhouse. The New York Times Book Review puts it nicely: "The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia — its 'effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world' — is, in fact, his own. They're a perfect fit."
The book details Bryson's travels all over Australia on two separate trips, and as such features some excellent insight into the people and places there. From the perspective of someone about to visit (i.e. my own) this in and of itself makes the book a must-read "alternative guidebook". While certainly not written in the style of a travel guide, I repeatedly found myself thinking, "Wow, that would be an awesome place to visit." Of cousre, Australia's vastness (something Bryson harps on incessantly) means that my visit will only fractionally overlap with his, but I still gleaned a handful of things to look for that I might otherwise have never known.
What makes the book so wonderful, however, is Bryson's writing style on both the small and large scales. The book had me laughing out loud on nearly every page, and sincerely touched from time to time by his more serious reflections. Reading Bryson is like taking the trip yourself in the company of a convivial, wisecracking sidekick. His style blends both American and British humour and references (he's a Yank who's spent most of his adult life living in Britain) which obviously appeals to me a lot; his description of Cricket on the radio literally had me in stitches.
Even more impressive than the page-to-page adventures, however, is the subtle story arc through the whole book. A few themes are woven beautifully throughout: Australia's uncomfortable history with the Aboriginal people, the peculiarly hearwarming Australian character, the scope of how huge and unknown the continent is, and its isolation. I was simply amazed at his skill as a writer to simultaneously chronologically transcribe his own journey and wrap it in a story about the country as a whole. Somehow the two threads never conflicted with each other or seemed to be forced into riding along with the other: they seemed — at beginning, middle and end — to be in harmony.
Reading Down Under has made me eager to both visit Australia and to read more of Bryson's travel writings (his Notes from a Small Island was recently selected in the UK as the book that best sums up British identity - typical of English irony that he's American). For everyone else, I highly recommend this book which has both a wealth of information and also manages to be a fantastic piece of literature.
I'm constantly amazed at how poor the general quality of copyediting on signs and other public displays is. When somebody bothers to pay a signmaker to make several copies of the same sign to be posted in public, don't they copyedit? Or at least ask somebody to take a glance at it?
All of the lifts in the Oxford Centre for Gene Function have the following sign (my emphasis):
In the event of an emergency, press the yellow 'bell' button. You will be connected with Oxford security services who will immediately instigate a rescue operation.
Then there's the whole loose/lose thing, as Anand pointed out.
The BBC news had a headline which read:
Japan's Princess Kiko 'pregnant'
My question is, why the hell is pregnant in quotes?!
Today has been a frustrating day.
First of all, I fucking despise openoffice. What an absolute and unmitigated piece of shit. It never renders MSWord docs properly and it just croaked after I had finished reviewing a really crappy paper that I really don't want to have to read again to re-evaluate its crapitude. Screw the stupid review form, I'm sending my comments back in plaintext.
Second of all, I'm not going to be submitting my manuscript before flying to Boston tomorrow. There just wasn't enough time to get Lon's revisions back in time and to write requisite cover letter, etc. The current plan is to submit on Monday, from Boston. If we make that deadline, then all will be well, but I'm a little worried about being able to effectively coordinate submission while separated by 3000 miles and 5 time zones.
Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.
I'm about halfway through Guns, Germs & Steel and something's nagging me about the author's style. I just realised what's bothering me: he (intentionally, I think) blurs the distinction between hypothesis-generation and experimental validation. Specifically, his argument is largely based on anecdotal evidence and Gedankenexperiments. He'll present a series of known archealogical and anthropological facts and then make a few fairly reasonable logical processions to "prove" his explanation for some phenomenon. To be fair he frequently points out that his views aren't proven beyond doubt, but always with a wink and a nod that says, "But my explanation just makes sense doesn't it? So we all know I'm right."
Really the entire book is about the first phase of science: generating hypotheses. We take some facts we know and combine them logically to think up a plausible explanation. The next step, however, is the most crucial: we set out to prove our hypothesis wrong! We try to think of some way to definitively prove that our guess is wrong and thus refine our guess. Absent other evidence, the path of the sun through the sky lends itself to the logical explanation that it's movign around the earth.
Most of his arguments are plausible, but it irks me that he doesn't seem to be able to offer much convincing proof that they're actually true. I think I'm especially bothered because he does use actual data to demonstrate some of his founding principles and then drifts into the realm of conjecture without really acknowledging the difference.
I have been recommended several times to read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, a set of "young adult fiction" books set in part in Oxford. Being without anything to read lately I wandered down to the local library on Saturday to see if I could get a copy. The Headington branch of the Oxfordshire Library System is typical of small-town sub-branches: two or three rooms in an old brick building, big kids section, lots of crappy romance novels.
The only available copy of the first book in the series, Northern Lights, was a large-print edition in the children's fiction section. I tracked it down and then stood sheepishly in line behind a guy taking out about 400 books about Billy the Big Red Fire Engine for his two 4 year old daughters. I must've been showing my discomfort because the librarian behind the desk which came up to my knees (presumably so little kids could see over it) gave me a smile and said conspiratorily, "This one's well worth venturing into the children's section."
Does anyone else find the name Wily Mo Pena to be really funny? Also, the MLB player search is really dumb. They only allow you to search on the player's last name, which means if you're looking for, say, someone named Martinez, you get about 20 results. Would it be that difficult to enable searching on first and last name?
Miro and Ehren have had some companions in their travels lately, including at least a couple each of English and Scots (note to Ehren: I get confused about who's who in your narration, I think you need a dramatis personae for reference purposes). They both talked about how confusing it is to have such a menagerie of accents, a sentiment to which I can readily relate.
A centre of learning such as Oxford tends to attract people from lots of different places. In this particular case it seems to be a sampling of all the different locations in the world that at some point were subjugated by Her Majesty's armed forces.
Here are some of the flavours of English I've observed so far:
Coming from New England, where everything is just named after a place in England (i.e. the town names rarely have anything to do with the towns themselves), I guess I never considered that those old English names probably had a reason behind them at some point.
Oxford calls its intra-university mail system "Pigeon Post", and every college has a room where each student has his "pigeon hole". I get the sense its kind of a thing here, as I saw some Brasenose undergrads heading in the Porter's Lodge (where the pigeon holes are) yesterday saying, "Pidgie, pidgie!" (the Spring term is just beginning, so presumably their excitement had something to do with not having checked their mail in a long while).
At any rate, I can receive mail at college, so if anyone is dying to send me a letter, address it to:
Jeffrey Barrett
Brasenose College,
Oxford,
OX1 4AJ
United Kingdom
So far all I've received in my pigeon hole is my first battels (college bill), my University ID and some spam from the college chapel.
All this brings to mind an incongruity (one of many!) I've noticed in the last few days. The government mail service here is called Royal Mail, but everyone uses the word post to refer to it ("The check's in the post" or "I'll post you this letter"). In the United States, it's the opposite: the service is the US Postal Service, but everyone talks about getting their mail, or mailing a letter.
Last night my Mom asked me to fix her VCR. The problem (as it always is) was that the channel on the VCR was set to 2 instead of 3, so it wasn't recording off the feed for the television. For some reason it always returns to this setting after a power cycle.
"Why does it change?" she asked.
"I guess channel 2 is the default for some reason," I replied.
"Default? What do you mean?"
"You know. Default. It's the default setting."
"Like defaulting on a loan?"
Now maybe I'm just stupid, but I had no idea that the usage of default meaning "the standard state" is a very recent definition attributed in the dictionary with the note computer science. I guess the word doesn't really apply to anything except electronic gizmos controlled by software instead of an actual person. If you had asked me to define default, however, I would've immediately given that definition and relegated the concept of failing to fulfill an obligation to secondary status.
The word default is a huge part of my lexicon: I use it literally almost every day. Amusing to think that my Mom didn't even know what I meant.
