New post at Chicago Boyz.

Here. It’s mostly just venting frustration.

“I really feel like throwing my arms up and swaying when I hear this song, even if it’s on the subway!”

- you tube commenter on “Dominos,” by The Big Pink (these girls fall like dominos….dominos….dominos…!)

But the music is perfect. It really is.

Utterly appropriate that I should link to Portishead in the previous post. The weather, you know? So foggy and cool and gray. It’s warmer this a.m. than it has been for the past few days, and the snow has melted to leave the streets and buildings glistening –  just a little. The morning commuter trains, which flash silver in sunlight, are muted by the foggy weather and are a dull pewter under fog and cloud. I can’t imagine not having the kinds of views I have: it’s been so many years that I’ve lived up above the streets; fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh floors, in this city or that. Not really high up like the serious sky-scraper dwellers, but enough to make views of rooftops and trains and trees a part of the whole, like a door or floor. The room wouldn’t be furnished without such views.

(I’m deciding whether or not to make some rice. It’s our annual Christmas/Holiday potluck today and I signed up to bring an entree. I was tired yesterday, so I threw together a quick keema mattar (ground meat with peas and Indian spices – you can use lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, whatever). I ought to have bread or rice to go with it, but I dunno! There’s always too much food at these things and I have got to run. I guess I better quit typing…  .  What odd creatures some of us have become because of these funny internet-y machines. Why am I telling you all of this instead of hurrying up and cooking and packing lunches, already?)

“Roads,” Portishead

So 90s.

“A task force composed of members of British, US and Afghan special forces will be ordered to hunt down and kill or capture senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders as part of American-lead Nato surge into southern Afghanistan and the border region of Pakistan.”

Daily Telegraph (via Small Wars Journal)

What do you think of this color scheme?

I like it – it’s relaxing, no? – because I’m drawn to natural woods, lots of space, and mix-and-match.  (And, no, this is not my place but a “Dream Home” found via the New York Post (via Instapundit). I know, this post IS the ultimate in navel-gazing procrastination, but seriously folks, I needed something visual to break up all the workity-work-work I’ve been working on like a good worker bee….)

So, what do you think?

“Top American and International Security Assistance Force commander General Stanley McChrystal is getting set to testify before the Senate and the House this week. Here are some of the questions we’d ask, if we were Congresscritters.”

Danger Room (Wired)

And, Fluornoy, Jones & Nicholson at AEI (Attackerman)

*I’m just marking the above because I haven’t got time to read the links right now; in fact, I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE SURFING, I SHOULD BE DOING OTHER STUFF. Yeah, I feel better now that I’ve yelled at myself. Weird, but true. It’s that whole desi guilt-trip thing.

**I haven’t forgotten about The Atlantic health-care article, dear Reader who asked, but I’m swamped and will get to it soon, hopefully!

Do you ever feel like this?

Fellow, sometime-and-in-some-fashion, academics or others dabbling in paper writing?

Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright green after a wet April. It wasn’t the double-exposure effect of the last half-minute’s talk that had dumbfounded him, for such incidents formed the staple material of Welch colloquies; it was the prospect of reciting the title of the article he’d written. It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article’s niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but his own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. ‘In considering this strangely neglected topic,’ it began. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool. ‘Let’s see,’ he echoed Welch in a pretended effort of memory: ‘oh yes; The Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450 to 1485…’

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis.

I never tire of this book – it’s one of my favorites – even as I pretty much dislike the main character and the object of his affection, the tepid and colorless Christine. What are your favorite campus, or academic, satires?

(cross posted at Chicago Boyz)

Update: There are some very good suggestions for reading in the comments section at the Chicago Boyz link. And SU, I am not procrastinating. I am working on my projects in a timely and methodical fashion, okay?

I’ve already broken my promise….

….to stick to commenting only on the above-mentioned blogs, and in a more limited fashion, too. Typical.

“As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I’m not sure whether the United States and Pakistan have the same objectives.”

- from the Lally Weymouth interview with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Washington Post)

(The above goes along with some comments I made at zenpundit, too.)