Well, I meant to keep this blog more current than I have. A quick update, yes?

Times have seriously changed career-wise. I have finally made the complete transition from "occasional high school teacher" to "editor" and I have no regrets in the slightest about leaving the formal world of education. I'm a book editor for a well-known and prestigious international academic publishing house now. In nuce, My day is spent working with academics in the field of religion and their manuscripts in the labyrinthine world of publication. I actually use both my liberal arts undergraduate and graduate degrees on a daily basis and get paid for it. I'm completely in my element and very happy. No, there are not a lot of parties rubbing elbows with the best and the brightest. Well, there is the occasional party.

This past week, M- and I went to southern Maine with one of our best friends for the holiday. Almost equidistant from Portland and Portsmouth, NH, we ate across both states and had a wonderful time relaxing. We even drove past the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. The black SUVs in the driveway were quite intimidating and Shrub wasn't even home. We went to The Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, where there is awesome 1950's pop culture decor, great food, and a wonderful vibe. It had an Austin feel to it. Whoever selected the in-house music did a wonderful job. I kept wanting to know who was playing. I think the new Interpol album was in the selection... The dj certainly loves Joy Division. None was played, but all the bands were certainly inspired. Sad Lovers and Giants was one of bands. How I had missed them way back when is beyond me. Think a bit of The Ocean Blue and The Sundays. They probably got lost in the shuffle, but they're British and I was living in small town Texas so music could be hard to come by.

I finished The Count of Monte Cristo, which was great. I couldn't put down the last 500 pages. It really is where Aaron Spelling learned all his craft. I've had enough of honor and French Romanticism. Now, I'm reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I'm only about thirty pages in, but it's captivated me so far. I'll be curious where this goes, especially now that I live near where the book takes place and, unlike Texas, one sees Jews are everywhere. I know that's a very goyische thing to say, but what can you do?

Yesterday, I remarked about how the apocalyptic 28 Days Later ripped off "The Purple Smurfs". Today, I would like to further my observations about how the milquetoast sequel, 28 Months Later, ripped off UNICEF. 28 Weeks Later is a Hollywoodified, cash-drenched CGI extrapolation of a good idea that drums in the the viewer a heavy-handed allegory about the incompetence of the American military during a forced occupation of foreign territory. Long story short: Quarantined London is now under US-led NATO control and the first groups of citizens are allowed back into the city. The virus is unknowingly brought back into the "green zone" and chaos ensues - with two cute kids, whom you know are going to be not worth the while of the human race.

One scene of the film, provided predictably in the trailer, is the veritable firebombing of the streets of London a la North Vietnam or Dresden or Baghdad or wherever. Infected and terrified people alike are incinerated. Depressing? Sure. Indescriminate killing by the military and the infected. Who's the real enemy here? And who really suffers?

UNICEF, in a campaign in 2005, had already dealt with the issue of indescriminate bombing and the suffering of the innocents - and in the sexier language of French, as well. Granted, these bombs are not falling on frothing, hopping purple smurfs. They're falling on la-la, la-la-la-la happy, utopian blue smurfs. But the bombs fall on the entire Smurf Village commune. It's a nice touch for a post-Cold War message to us Cold War kids. And in less than thirty seconds, it packs more punch than a ninety minute injection of faux-adrenaline with creepy music and jarring camera angles.

Again, Hollywood cannot come up with an original idea to save its life. Personally, I found the bombs raining upon the smurfy population much more compelling. The lonely, forlorn shoe of a fallen Smurfette says it all.

Enjoy the ad.

I found 28 Days Later to be an utter thrill ride of a horror movie. It contained a simple, riveting plot involving an apocalyptic plague against which few could escape. Transmission was simple: by saliva or blood, most easily by the act of biting. Infection and manifestation of the Rage virus was swift and acute. The infected felt woozy, then pain in the extremities, then violent agitation, often vomiting blood.

Only after watching its sophomore slump of a sequel did I realize that the idea of 28 Days Later was not all that innovative. It is not that it is reminiscent of zombie movies, nor that it is in the tried and true, well worn genre of apocalypticism. Rather, the movies hearken back to the 1980s Saturday morning cartoon classic series, The Smurfs. Specifically, the episode entitled "The Purple Smurfs".

The story opens up with the smurfs working on a large bridge, which eventually collapses due to typical smurf incompetence. Sent out into the forest by an irate Papa Smurf to cut logs, Lazy Smurf happens upon a large, cantankerous purple fly, which bites him on the tail. Feeling slightly woozy, Lazy Smurf turns from smurfy blue to an angry purple and violently shouts "GNAP! GNAP!" No longer able to walk, he now hops, his teeth in a permanent clench.

Brainy Smurf comes upon him and is scared shitless, barely escaping the rage of Lazy. He tells the rest of the Smurfs about Lazy's condition. Papa Smurf, encyclopedia of all things smurf, instantly blames the Purple Fly, but can't remember the cure. The smurfs catch Lazy, tie him up and toss him into an empty room.

Lazy, like those who have been infected with the Rage virus, acquires super-smurfy strength and breaks his bonds. He then bites Hefty Smurf on the tail and infects him. Eventually, almost all of the smurfs are infected and, enraged, hop like maddened rabbits at the smurfy survivors. In the end, Papa Smurf is the remaining uninfected smurf and, for a short while, he too becomes a purple smurf. The entire race of smurfs is infected with the purple Rage virus. HUZZAH!

Unfortunately, because of the serendipitous fire that causes a biological weapon to explode, all the smurfs are saved when they get gassed.

I could write a more witty and Lacanian analysis of this that involves lots of id-driven tail-biting anal sex, but I have to get back to work.

Here's the Smurf episode for those interested. It's about 10 minutes long and relatively smurfy.

Today in New Haven, it is cold and rainy. Last night, I saw the Austin band Spoon play at Toad's Place and that was a lot of fun. I even ran into girlwonder for the first time in weeks since she's been holed up and finishing her master's thesis. Congrats! The whole evening was great, but this morning I find myself listening to Eklektikos on Austin's public radio station, KUT 90.5.

One thing I miss is that the Harry Ransom Center celebrates Bloomsday every June 16 with readings from Joyce's Ulysses. I think I'll try and organize something with Anna Liffey's this year...

Report: Text messaging harms written language

DUBLIN, Ireland (Reuters) -- The rising popularity of text messaging on mobile phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.

The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.

"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to Wednesday's Irish Times. "Text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional conventions in writing."

The report laments that, in many cases, candidates seemed "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary".

In 2003, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top 10 performers in an international league table of literacy standards compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/04/26/ireland.text.message.reut/index.html

Well, that was a good nap to try to kill The Ill. I feel a little better.

I'm currently about 360 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, mostly at the urging of my partner. But I actually enjoy it. I've never been one for those great novels that originally existed as newspaper serials, like Dickens works, for instance. It's not the length. I'm not sure what it is. There is certainly something different in the anticipation of reading a  novel that comes with every issue of the paper as opposed to

having it in paperback form. It feels muc more like  waiting for each episode of Rome or Lost. But then, perhaps, you buy an entire seasons or series on DVD, like Firefly. And that's got a different feel all the same.

Reading the unabridged version of TCoMC fleshes out the story more and the side plots are nice. It consists of a lot of side characters telling more stories that flesh out the motives of connections of main characters. Having never read the unabridged version, I don't know what most people are used to, which is fine.

One of my favorite parts of the novel is that Dumas does a wonderful job of referencing classical episodes from Greece and Rome. He'll reference The Aeneid here or Martial there or something from Greek mythology. It's not that he's being obscure or flamboyant, lording his knowledge over the head of his readers. Instead, he takes the time to briefly explain the relevant parts of his comparisons, if only with a clause or a phrase describing the reference. Of course, he does this with "recent" history as well, for instance, French history regarding Napolean or the French Revolution. And I know very little anymore about that material. He keeps his readers very much in mind as he writes.

Dumas is certainly one of the more "full" authors I've read in a while. Contemporary literature seems to be more

sparse and tight. Dumas' prose flourishes and he paints his literary canvas with little blossoms on trees, with wide landscapes and darkly lit prisons, where devious characters cloacked by chiaroscuro await to pass a secret message to unknowing patsies. One book that I've read recently that seems similar is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. He, too, has a vast palate of colors, though his canvas is more like a graphic novel than a serial one.

All in all, Dumas is enjoyable. And I have no idea what's going to happen. I've never seen any of the movies. I just know that revenge is involved. I will admit, however, that I after

this long work, I'll go back to something a bit more comfortable like Burrough's Naked Lunch. I can think of little else that is much different from Nineteenth Century novels...

What was going to be an exciting day full of writing became a morning where I am absolutely slammed by a head cold. I rarely get substantially sick, but today I was truly whalloped by the Ill.

Maybe a bit of reading would be better...

It's always nice to discover when you've got the creative juices flowing again. Sometimes you do have to make it happen, but when the dry spell ends, well, go for it.

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For some reason, I didn't put 2 and 2 together, because I only learned recently that a guy I know from Austin is pretty much responsible for Too Much Coffee Man. He's not the artist, but the artist used to hang out at his bookstore all the time and draw patrons. Why this didn't click, I do not know. I used to go wander through Desert Books way back when and peruse its internet theory, french poststructuralism, and classics sections. Back in the mid 90s, that was pretty much the only place to get them. And they actually HAD Loebs, which few bookstores did unless you special ordered them.

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I recently finish Augustine's Confessions. I had actually never read it all the way through - only half of it, last time I tried. It's a very thoughtful, yet convoluted read. I learned that his mother, Monica, was overly obsessive and doting. Gah. AND that his mother suggested that he marry a ten year old when he was thirty. As was the custom of the time. :(
She was even two years below the legal limit, but Augustine was willing to wait. Then he decided to go the chastity route. But this is not the most important thing about Augustine. Pretty much all of Western Christianity has been influenced him whether people want to realize that or not, Roman Catholic or otherwise. it's amazing how people think that they can read the Bible in a vacuum, when really they're influenced by 2,000 years of culture and history. It almost gives Hegel and his Geist some credibility, except... um... no.

Now, we're up to Augustine's City of God Against the Pagans, allegedly his most accessible work

. This will take some time.