“Ultranationalist” politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky apparently likes what he sees: “Everyone who sees the film will understand that Russians and Ukrainians are one people — and that the enemy is from the West.”

Meanwhile, “The premiere inspired viewers in Krasnodar to shave their heads into Cossack haircuts, and early this month Russian Fashion Week devoted an afternoon to a collection called Cossacks in the City.”

Everybody now!
April 1 is Gogol’s 200th birthday
now we drink Cosmos when we’re thirstay

• A.L. Kennedy’s Day out in paperback today.
• 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers ($13 w/ free shipping). It includes all your favorites. For Real.
• $10 super-fantastic cassette tote bag {via – who always has the best leads}

There are so many nooks & crannies on the internet filled with dopeness. It is always a pleasure to fall into another.

(Watering Hole by Amy Stein) {via}

And you say, Goddamn
This is the dope jam

I started Gravity’s Rainbow this weekend. So far, I am loving it — I hope that I am able to finish it. My track record for fiinishing “long” books isn’t the best, even for books I love. (I’m looking at you, Infinite Jest & The Recognitions). Hopefully, public shaming of myself on the internet will help. Also consider this to be an invitation to be my goodreads friend.

Tell your friends, to get with my friends
And we can be friends

Speaking of Infinite Jest, I hear that David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel may be teetering towards publication. Without knowing all the facts, this doesn’t sit well with me. Well…no reason my hangups should be yours, too.

Reading through the appendix, as it turns out the book was originally published by Harper, in conjunction with the Book of the Month Club. (It would eventually be the first Book of the Month Club selection by an African American author.) It seems as if Harper was amenable to publishing the book consistent with Wright’s artistic vision, but the club (presumably fearing its members’ sensitive natures or even government censors) took exception to several passages, most notably a sex-tinged scene in a movie theater balcony towards the beginning of the story. Wright acquiesed, probably grudgingly, to the club’s wishes, and completely rewrote the theater scene.

(From PeteLit)

• 200th birthday props for EA Poe at Amoeba blog
• Also at Amoeba, a look at the Mats’ Let It Be and questions (some of) its timelessness.
• At LitKicks, Levi posted another selection from his upcoming memoir. It took me back (16 years – gasp!) to fond memories of Charles Isbell’s Homeboy From Hell, still one of my all-time favorite internet music sites, especially the New Jack reviews.
• I recently received my copy of You, as part of Lauren Cerand’s The New You Project. As per usual, I’m already behind the starting line, watching as others are off and running. To wit: Largehearted Boys’ book notes entry from Jonathan Baumbach. More to come once I’ve read the book.

GIDE (1951): ‘I am afraid my sentences are becoming grammatically incorrect.’

“There was someone whose chatter certain circumstances made it necessary for me to listen to. He was ready at every opportunity with a little philosophical lecture which was utterly boring. Driven almost to despair, I discovered suddenly that he perspired unusually profusely when he spoke. I saw how the pearls of sweat gathered on his brow, then joined in a stream, slid down his nose, and ended hanging in a drop at the extreme tip of it. From that moment everything was changed; I could even take pleasure in inciting him to begin his philosophical instruction, just to observe the sweat on his brow and on his nose.”

Either/Or

These weak chapters show up the worst of Meyer and Brysac’s writing style, which is sometimes pretentious to the point of incomprehensibility and becomes more so when they seem to lack interest in their subject matter. The thesaurus takes a battering: Meyer and Brysac will not have half of something if they can have a moiety; they will not give a gift if they can give a lagniappe; they will not quote a saying if they can quote an apothegm.

Sometimes it’s almost impossible to make out what they mean, as when Gladstone is said to have “habitually lofted oratorical rockets into the unassailable empyrean,” when all the poor man actually did was to answer a few questions. Or when the British agent St. John Philby is said “to glare at the world through his owlish shrubbery.” What is owlish shrubbery? A shrubbery full of owls? A shrubbery shaped like an owl? A prop from Monty Python? As to what glaring through such a thing might signify, this reviewer is at a loss to imagine.

But in the realm of books I might actually pick up, this one looks right up my, er, alley:

For similar reasons, S.U.V.’s are more dangerous than cars. Not just because they’re slower to stop and harder to maneuver, but because — by conferring a sense of safety — they invite careless behavior. “The safer cars get,” Vanderbilt says, “the more risks drivers choose to take.” (S.U.V. drivers are more likely to not bother with their seat belts, to talk on cellphones, and to not wear seat belts while talking on cellphones.) So it goes for much of the driving universe. More people are killed while crossing in crosswalks than while jaywalking. Drivers pass bicyclists more closely on a road with bike lanes than on one without.

I might postulate, however, that the careless behavior of SUV drivers is less cause/effect than such people are simply more likely to be assholes. But I’ll reserve judgment until after my library stocks the book.

Jonathan Segura, in support of his novel Occupational Hazards, blogs about Omaha at Powell’s, including a nod to the “miraculously” alive Dave Sink at The Antiquarium (which last I head was going out of business… guess not, just a new location)

Ernie Chambers, no longer in the legislature, is looking for his day in court versus God, seeking an injunction against the violent acts of tornadoes & earthquakes: “If there is a ruling against the existence of God, it will be by the court and not by me.”

The declaration that we have always opposed the war, is true or false accordingly as one may understand the term ” opposing the war.” If to say ” the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President,” be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. Whenever they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they have said it on what has appeared good reason to them: The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other property to destruction, to you may appear a per¬fectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us. So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly. But if, when the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was support of the war, then it is not true that we have always opposed the war. With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies. And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and the lives of our political brethren in every trial, and on every field.

And if Obama be our Lincoln, and the Mexican-American War be our Iraq, then where is our Frederick Douglass?

The determination of our [...] President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wrining from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident frorm the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party… by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.

Slightly related note: I dreamt that Obama chose Bob Kerrey as his running mate. Ummm, TGIT?