March 24, 2011

Spent a fair chunk of the day doing what amounts to math/logic puzzles to meet the last requirement for me to be considered for management in my company. Luckily, I enjoy the mess out of a good math/logic puzzle. Had just come back from the sauna, Charles Mingus playing quietly in the background, and New Orleans coffee flowing all afternoon. I've had worse afternoons in Beijing.

March 17, 2011

The man who brought rock to China.

March 17, 2011

Sonic Youth & Yoko Ono are playing in NYC on March 27th to raise money for Japan.

March 16, 2011

In China, instead of Facebook, Twitter, and the other tools we use to social network, they have their (gov't allowed and monitored) homegrown QQ and Renren, both more or less direct rip-offs of US social network sites/technologies. Above is my sorry QQ farm, where "friends" can steal my kid animals for more points, and I, in turn, do the same. I also have a garden where the same stealing from friends is a sideways way of keeping in touch. Kultur with a very miniscule k.

Ides of March, 2011

While my last two seasons were "rebuilding" years, I think the Chaoyang Tigers look okay this year for competition:

Hitters
C-Martinez (Tigers)
1-Loney (Dodgers)
2- Pedroia (Red Sox)
SS- Ramirez (Marlins)
3- Sandoval (Giants)
OF- Rios (White Sox)
OF- Ellsbury (Red Sox)
OF- Morgan (Nationals), for the steals
DH-Reyes (Mets [SS])
DH- Pierre (White Sox), for the steals
Bench- Beltran (Mets)
Bench- Rollins (Phillies)
Bench- Brignac (Devil Rays)
Bench- Fowler (Rockies)

Pitchers
S- Verlander (Tigers)
S-Morrow (Maple Leafs)
RP- Bell (Padres)
RP- Rodriguez (Mets)
P- Franklin (Cardinals)
P- Aardsma (Mariners)
P- Lewis (Rangers)
P- Wilson (Rangers)
Bench- Floyd (White Sox)

March 11, 2011

Rereading Beroul's The Romance of Tristan , this time trans. Alan S. Fedrick (Penguin, 1970). Would've preferred the original text, but I'll take what I can get.

March 9, 2011

Trying to remember the artist (most likely German) who photographed a large board within a church that read: "Ich habe angst."
___
Thanks to Greg Roehl.

March 7, 2011

Reading Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (International Publishers, 1971; repr. 2010) and wondering about the future of labor in America.

February 28, 2011

Detroit 187

When I asked my still-in-the-Detroit-area friend whether or not to watch this show, she simply said, "Detroiters aren't that pretty," and she's right. The cops I knew growing up in the 313 were much plainer, dumpier, not made for TV, think "Hill Street Blues".

That said, I do like the pro-Detroit spin that the writers (some of whom are obviously not from Detroit--for example, Grand Rapids to Detroit is a 3.5-4 hour trip, not a 2 hour trip, if you are speeding: this timeline was central to a rich wife having killed her husband. If it were a New York cop show, they wouldn't have been so sloppy.)

The shots the cameras are getting from the city exist, both good and bad.

I'm watching it because I can see my hometown from Beijing. I'm glad the producers and writers went the middle road with how they present the city.