Miscellaneous junk

I don't have any deep thoughts to share on anything in particular today, so I will use the good old "bullets" format, and touch upon a bunch of different things:

• Wilco -- Where have I been all along? I finally checked out this band, which Claire had recommended to me a while ago, and they are great!

• Late last week and early this week, I read two very decent French contemporary novels loaned to me by a colleague from another university. One of them was Stupeur et tremblements (Fear and Trembling) by wunderkind Amélie Nothomb -- the daughter of a Belgian diplomat who lived in the Far-East as a child -- which I read in just one day. I really liked the quirkiness of this novel and the writer's style, and I am still trying to figure out if she is a real genius or just a flash in the pan. This semi-autobiographic novel relates, in the first person, the tribulations of a young Belgian girl, fluent in Japanese, who is doing an internship in a large Japanese corporation. Amidst a clash of cultures, she fumbles so badly that she ends up being demoted to the functions of bathroom cleaner. It received a prestigious Académie Française award, and it seems that the critics are very divided on Nothomb -- some think that she has no talent and that her novel was a real waste of this award, while others think that she is beyond great. I guess I'll find out by reading a couple more of her works. The other novel was L'Évangile selon Pilate (The Gospel According to Pontius-Pilate), by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (whose novella, Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran, was adapted into a movie starring Omar Sharif), a rather clever, irreverent, and at times hilarious take on Jesus' last days and resurrection.

• My landlord passed on to me, early this week, a bunch of back issues of The Nation, and I read most of them cursorily, but I read in its entirety the issue in which the magazine endorsed Kerry, stating that "the most important reason to vote for Kerry is one that he does not mention. It is to safeguard democracy in America." It was a bit scary, frankly, especially "100 facts and 1 opinion: The Non-arguable Case against the Bush Administration," which concludes with the following statement: "If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world."

• I am pissed about a couple of situations at work (nothing major, though), and I know that I should just get a life and let it roll, but it's kind of difficult to do.

• Next week is Thanksgiving, and I am certainly looking forward to a longish weekend, having Claire here for that time, and enjoying our traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which always rocks (and, of course, the turkey is always better this year than on any other previous year.)

• What that means is that, when we return to school on November 29, there will only be two weeks of classes and exam week left. I am already a bit panicked about my semester break, because I have to prepare for two classes I have never taught, and possibly get the research done on the paper I will be presenting at the Popular Culture Conference in March.

• It also means that my landlords will be leaving very soon, for their months of hibernation in sunny Florida (they generally return in very late June or early July.) Not that I don't like them, but I don't feel like I have as much privacy as I should have when they are around, since they live right in my backyard. They do take very good care of me, though. Every single year, when they leave, I wonder if they will survive the winter... I know that my landlady has had some minor health issues lately, so I do get a little concerned.

• Even though this concerns the still rather distant future, I am trying to figure out what to do about France in June. I want to stay after I am done teaching the group of students going to Paris with me (and two other faculty members, as part of a "team-taught" Honors course), but I do not want to piss off my mother (by not staying at the hotel located about a kilometer from her house; but -- I will not stay there if I have to foot the bill, and this is not negotiable), and I don't want to impose myself on my brother and his wife by overstaying my welcome at their place (he hinted the other day that I would be bored out of my wits if I stayed at his house.) I am considering the possibility of going to either Rome, Venice, and Florence, or to Amsterdam, and do just that and nothing else, not even visit my family. In the end, I think that it will all hinge on money matters.