February 28th - March 6th 2005
Sunday Basket case
Saturday FLU!!
Friday FLU
Thursday Flu
Wednesday flu
Tuesday Hero
Monday Gates
Sunday 6th March 2005
El Torbellino taught me, of the arts of war, everything he knew; as well as some things I suspect he made up on the spur of the moment. In this way he brought the phant'sies and romance of those musty old books within my reach.
But not within my grasp; for never mind my skill with the cutlass, the rapier, the dagger, pistol and musket. I still lived in a nunnery in Darién.
The King was in my thoughts every day: El Torbellino and I would kneel before the image of St Lemuel, whose emblem was the basket he had been carried around in, and pray on His Majesty's behalf.
A quote, chosen pretty much at random, from page 32 (of 815) of volume two (of three) of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
I hope it helps explain (to Oliver and Peter particularly) why I've just embarked on re-reading the whole lot all over again, this time trying not to let the pace and complexity of the plot blind me to so many of the excellent sly jokes.
Saturday 5th March 2005
How do I know it was flu?
Because, besides the 24 hours of fever where I swear I almost heard angelic voices, besides the fact that even my hair ached, besides being too tired to even read and the fact that I took myself off the rota for days thereby losing £340 - because, besides all that, I distinctly remember thinking that if I caught someone so much as even thinking something about how men never have colds, they always have flu, I was so going to rip their arm off and thrust it down their fucking throat.
I don't think you get that with a cold.
Friday 4th March 2005
Flu
Thursday 3rd March 2005
Flu
Wednesday 2nd March 2005
Flu
Tuesday 1st March 2005
Ying xiong, Zhang Yimou's stunningly beautiful stab at wuxia pien was released here on Monday Feb 21st - and dropped through my letterbox early on Tuesday Feb 22nd. That's class.
Monday 28th February 2005
And now The Gates are closed.
For such a massive project, news coverage has seemed curiously muted. I've seen nothing on British tv, and very little in the papers here. One imagines Christo tip-toeing on eggshells to get Major Bloomberg's co-operation; after 25 years of meetings, maybe the joy just leaked away...
For such a superSized project, there must be stories out there to be told. Sadly I don't get the time these days to read the New York blogs as often as I'd like to, but it's a pound to a pretzel that Sparky has something intelligent to say on the topic...
(Personally, I liked Hal Foster's point that an art that began as a détournement of Establishment psycho-geography has, in its middle age, itself spawned a quasi-official New York tourist site.)
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