Life and Fate

'In it you can hear both a lament for the dead, and the furious joy of life itself'.

Vasily Grossman may be the best writer you've never heard of. But he is apparently slowly making his way into Western consciousness as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Martin Kettle, writing in the Guardian, does a much better job discussing this book than I ever could, and it is thanks to him that I am a better man. Yes, this book had that big of an effect on me.

It is sweeping in scope. Set in and around the battle for Stalingrad during WWII, it encompasses the whole of the human experience. It is a Soviet dissedent book, to be sure. But really, it is a book about people, and what it means to be truly free.

You might be inclined to dismiss this book on the grounds that it is Russian and therefore difficult to read. Let me reassure you that it isn't. Sure, it is typically full of many, many characters, but there's a handy list of characters at the back.

Janis Joplin sang that Freedom was just another word for nothin' left to lose. George Bush defined it as being his particular brand of Conservatism.

Thankfully, Grossman has a much more nuanced take on it. I'll leave it to you to experience the lament for the dead, and the furious joy of life itself.

One for the Cutters

Went to see The Hold Steady Wednesday night. And I would love to write a really intelligent review of them. But all I really want to say is that they were absolutely fantastic. They've apparently got a reputation for putting on legendary shows, and Wednesday night didn't disappoint.

Performers of intelligent, complicated Rock 'n' Roll, their songs are full of Bukowski-esque (?) characters. Losers, drug addicts and bad girlfriends all make appearances. My favourite song, Stuck Between Stations, first references Sal Paradise, the narrator of On The Road, and then a Minneapolis poet, whom I've not read in years, called John Berryman, to comment on the disillusionment of being young today.

Musically, they're often expansive, taking the time to venture off on guitar solos or piano riffs. The influences are pretty wide, if blatant. And it works.

They're sort of a cross between Husker Du and Bruce Springsteen.

I haven't been this excited about a band in a very long time, and i strongly recommend you check out Stuck Between Stations, Lord, I'm Discouraged, Stay Positive (which I need to look into, but I suspect it's about living under Bush), Stevie Nix, and Chips Ahoy!.

Seriously. They're awesome.

The Bear Comes Home

It was reported this weekend that the British pound dipped below the euro for the first time since the euro was floated in 2000. This is unimaginable, like having one of the big three car manufacturers in the US go under.

The pound is expected to stay at parity with the euro for the forseeable future, making cheap holidays on the continent a thing of the past. And, presumably, most antagonism towards the UK switching to the euro.

With greater effect on me personally, friends are being made redundant, like so many thousands of others. But we in digital marketing were meant to be more isolated than ATL, or indeed, car manufacturers.

There's a lot of uncertainty in the air. No one, including our leaders and most of our experts, know what is going to happen. You just can't trust anything anyone says. Not because they're not reliable people or sources, but because we are in an unprecedented place in just about every aspect of our daily lives.

Mostly because there isn't much to celebrate, it just doesn't feel like Christmas. I certainly don't feel like I can celebrate when it is going to be a dark season for so many people, particularly the ones I care about who have just lost their jobs, and face an even more uncertain future than the rest of us.

But I do have a lot to be thankful for (still). So, can we cancel Christmas and have Thanksgiving again? I could do with thanking people again.

Bullshit Bailout

Articulates with much more brevity than I could muster exactly what I think of the bailout.

Sadly, said bailout is necessary to save a vast amount of jobs.

This just in

A friend just sent me a link to the following. I find it hilarious, of course. But it is also a great way to articulate just why anyone who belives in Republican ideals is a flippin' narrow-minded idiot:

Dear Red States:

We're ticked off at the way you've treated California and we've decided we're leaving.

We intend to form our own country and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states
pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro choice and anti war and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.

We wish you success in Iraq and hope that the WMDs turn up but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven

Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush

Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

We're taking the good pot too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California.

Solo Companion

Years ago, in a restaurant in Minneapolis, I worked with a guy called Terry Johnson. Like so many waiters working in restaurants, his main job was something else. He was a concert pianist, and he was working as a waiter to save up enough money to make his own CD. Restaurants are full of dreams.

This was in 1992 or 3, way before Garage Band and Apple made it easy for anyone with deft enough fingers to cut a CD. He had to book studio time, a sound engineer, and pay for all the post-production. And he supplemented the income he got from corporate gigs and playing in shopping malls by working as a waiter.

He did finally do it, and we were all so proud of him. We held our own launch party at the restaurant and bought the CD.

Much to my surprise, I really liked the music, and would listen to it in college when studying, and in NY when I thought I would never make it. I listened to it when I first moved to London 'cause it reminded me of home, and I listened to it this morning, for the first time in a long time, while Eva was packing.

I don't know what happened to Terry. You meet so many people working in the business that it's impossible to keep in touch with all of them. The relationships might be short-lived, but thankfully their influence can be life-long.

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