¶ Matins: A Times over the weekend exhorted Goldman Sachs & al to make a genuine apology — in the form of restitution.

¶ Lauds: Michael Johnston raises a very interesting question that is too often overlooked by viewers: where was the photographer standing? (The Online Photographer)

¶ Prime: onathan Ford and Peter Thal Larsen propose three concrete measures for trimming banks down to salvageable — fail-able — size. First, proportional capital buffers. Second, restore a virtual Glass-Steagall by insulating relatively safe activities from relatively risky ones. Third, dissolve global banks into “confederacies of national subsidiaries.” (Prospect)

¶ Tierce: Mike Sachs imagines the dialogue from porn movies starring his parents. (The New Yorker)

¶ Sext: Sam Kean thinks that William Safire and William F Buckley wrote too well. Was this a by-product of their conservatism? (3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Nones: Clan strife (exacerbated by religious differences) appears to be at the back of the gruesome abduction and massacre of at least 20 lawyers and journalists in the Philippine province of Maguindanao, where the writ of Manila appears not to run very effectively. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Sonya Chung discovers the drawbacks of multitasking — walking the dog while listening to an audiobook. The piece is really about how dogs are a writer’s best friend because they can’t talk, and Revolutionary Road teaches us that talk destroys; but, hey. (The Millions)

¶ Compline: Owen Flanagan reviews an intriguing book: Reading in the Brain, by Stanislas Dehaene. If our brains haven’t significantly evolved for 200,000 years (by the way: how does anyone know this?), then how have we managed to read for the past five thousand? Exaptation! (New Scientist)

¶ Matins: Is Bob Cringely mad? His vision of the future, “Pictures in Our Heads” — well you can see where he’s going. (“And the way we’ll shortly communicate with our devices, I predict, will be through our thoughts.”) But it’s the beginning of the entry that caught our eye. The power of Mr Cringely’s assumption (with which we’re ever more inclined to agree), that the iPhone/iTouch is today’s seminal device, from which everything in the future will somehow flow, seems to mark a moment.

¶ Lauds: Isaac Butler outlines just how very hard it is to apportion praise and blame in the highly collaborative atmosphere of the theatre. Mr Butler winds up by pointing out how much easier it is to judge the performance of a classic play, because one of the variables — the text, usually unfamiliar to premiere audiences — is taken out of the problem. (Parabasis; via Arts Journal and the Guardian)

¶ Prime: Jeffrey Pfeffer discusses the “Sad State of CEO Replacement.” His remarks prompt a question: Is the typical board of directors a band of masochists in search of a dominator? The minute a self-assertive bully walks in, they tend to submit with rapture. (The Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: Dave Bry is delighted to learn that the Milwaukee M12 2410-20 won a Popular Mechanics rating for Best Small Cordless Drill (or somesuch). Not that he’s ever going to use one. (The Awl)

¶ Sext: Adam Gopnik addresses the evolution of cookbooks, from aides-mémoire intended for professionals to encyclopedias for novices, and beyond. Oakeshott and gender differences are dragged in. The recent fetish for exotic salts is explained. (The New Yorker)

¶ Nones: Another winter of discontent for Europe? Yulia Tymoshenko is cooking with gas. The new tariff will “ensure  stable supplies of gas,” quoth the prime minister. Really? (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Our favorite literary couples, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, sits for an interview with the Wall Street Journal. We knew the basics. But it’s nice to have a bit of detail. (Who knew that Pasternak’s style is “studied”?) (via The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: At NewScientist, a slideshow taken from Christopher Payne’s Asylum: Inside the closed World of State Mental Hospitals. The show, presumably like Mr Payne’s book, ends on a guardedly positive note. (via  The Morning News)

Bon weekend à tous!

¶ Matins: Driving while intoxicated, and with a child in the car, will be made a felony, according to a law that has passed the New York State Assembly. Interlock devices, which block ignition when the driver’s breath carries faint amounts of alcohol, will be required for drivers convicted of driving while intoxicated. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Lucy Lu recently celebrated the first anniversary of Met Everyday, her online report of visits to the Museum. Her list of ten things that you must see (or wings that you must visit) is personable but not surprising — with the exception of the modern-art item.

¶ Prime: Tom Bajarin’s discussion, at PCMag Mobile, of the impact of Vooks on publishing suggests to us that the author of a plain old book could do as well as a Vook developer, delivering a formatted text as an “app,” and collecting 70% of the price. (via The Tomorrow Museum)

¶ Tierce: We’ve heard of the Ithaca Hours, an alternative local currency, but we can’t imagine how anything like it would work in Manhattan. But who cares: it would be gorgeous, if these bills designed by students at the School for Visual Arts were in circulation. (via The Best Part)

¶ Sext: Will Sam Sifton be the next editor of the New York Times? It’s a very interesting rumor, considering that the gent has just been assigned to reviewing restaurants for the newspaper. We’ll say this: he has certainly dusted off the genre.

¶ Nones: For a quick and snappy resume of Palestinian politics at the moment, you probably can’t beat the Beeb’s summary. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: V L Hartmann bumps into Joan Didion in the street — almost — and observes that in her carriage as in her prose, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking is not like “the old ladies you see up here on the East Side that are all stooped over.” (The Morning News)

¶ Compline: Conserving Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, an earthwork at the edge, and sometimes beneath the surface, of The Great Salt Lake. (NYT)

¶ Matins: Monica Howe writes about a problem that appears to be on the increase: drive-by porn and its variants. You’re sitting in some sort of traffic, minding your own business, when the guy next to you…. (Washington Post; via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: Yasmina Reza, in town to promote her directorial début, Chicas, with Emmanuelle Seignier — and to catch the first cast’s final performance of God of Carnage — talks to Speakeasy about all of that, and her friendship with Ms Seignier’s husband, Roman Polanski.

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon continues the debt-bias discussion, evaluating two reasons not to tax interest payments, and, not surprisingly, dismissing them even when he agrees with supporting arguments. (That’s what makes this discussion so interesting.)

¶ Tierce: The extraordinary Mandelbulb. We’ve been so hynotized by the latest in fractals that we’ve neglected to share.

¶ Sext: What to read next? Well, you could let your dreams determine the title — if you were Philip K Dick and strong enough to read “the dullest book in the world.” (Letters of Note)

¶ Nones: With a grim sort of relief, we note that intransigence is still the prevailing note in Honduran politics. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Terry Teachout encounters a stack of his new book(s), Pops, at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. He registers his reaction as closer to Mencken than to Hindemith. (About Last Night)

¶ Compline: Two lawyers from the Genomics Law Report consider the “intriguing question” of how personal DNA data might be handled in the event (an event in Iceland) of a direct-to-consumer’s genomics company’s going bankrupt. (Genetic Future; via Short Sharp Science)

¶ Matins: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals is eaten alive by John Williams, at The Second Pass, in a piece that begins with the surprised observation that Mr Foer does not mention Peter Singer in his book.

¶ Lauds: Michael Williams writes about the amazing Zildjian family, and shares some terrific clips. (A Continuous Lean)

¶ Prime: James Surowiecki addresses the debt bias in this week’s New Yorker, and in a background piece at the magazine’s blog.

¶ Tierce: While Choire Sicha rails against the “Swiss Drug Pushers” who run the United States government (at The Awl), Jonah Lehrer (at The Frontal Cortex) reminds us how L-Dopa really works.

¶ Sext: Unknown to Downing Street or the Palace, Margaret Thatcher dies. Meanwhile, Thatcher scholar Claire Berlinksi writes an article for Penthouse.

¶ Nones: Joshua Kurlantzick discusses President Obama’s trip to Asia, regretting that Indonesia was left off the itinerary and noting the dispiriting realism of Asian diplomacy today. (London Review Blog)

¶ Vespers: Grant Risk Hallberg’s long piece on myth and backlash in Bolaño studies serves as a toolkit to bring you completely up-to-date on a writer who, from beyond the grave, has excited a pungent array of macho responses. (The Millions)

¶ Compline: A story that we never thought we’d see: “Money Trickles North as Mexicans Help Relatives.” (NYT)

¶ Matins: In an over-and-above beautiful essay, Jonathan Raban recollects that he was taught to read, first, by his mother, and then, by William Empson. But Seven Types of Ambiguity opened his eyes to more than texts. (London Review of Books)

¶ Lauds: With trademark lucidity, Anne Midgette finds similarities between the troubles that newspapers are suffering these days and the woes of symphony orchestras. Not only that; she puts her finger on what’s wrong wrong with plans to “save” them. (Washington Post; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: At You’re the Boss, Barbara Taylor writes about her entrepreneurial brother-in-law’s search for “an Internet business.” What kind of business?

¶ Tierce: At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova directs our attention to a handsome new book about information design, The Visual Miscellaneum, by David McCandless.

¶ Sext: Scouting New York, which has just turned one year old, continues its exploration of the city’s out-of-the-way cemeteries. Moore-Jackson, in Woodside, looks like a destination park, but Scout tells us that it’s all locked up. (How did he get in, we don’t wonder?)

¶ Nones: Although Peter Galbraith doesn’t appear, at first glance, to have done anything wrong, he doesn’t seem to have been much concerned about the appearance of impropriety. While in some sort of complicated, conditional contractual relationship with a Norwegian drilling company, he participated in Iraqi constitutional negotiations (as an adviser, obviously) that resulted in Kurdish control over oil revenues. As a result of both factors, he stands to gain about $100 million.

¶ Vespers: In today’s Times, two good-sounding books received generous coverage in the form of news stories. That ought to do it so far as the Grey Lady is concerned. Neither book warrants coverage in the Book Review. (Janet Maslin gave Mr Agassi’s book a guarded rave in the daily paper.)

The first is Andre Agassi’s memoir, for which T J Moehringer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Tender Bar served as “midwife.” Mr Moehringer insists that he did not ghostwriting, but only coaxed Mr Agassi into writing a good book.

 The other book is high-end furniture restorer Maryalice Huggins’s Aesop’s Mirror: A Love Story. Although we’re looking forward to reading this book, we don’t want to read any more about it.

¶ Compline:  Compline: Gene doping is already prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, but fat lot of good that is going to do the inspectors, given the difficulties of detection. (Short Sharp Science)

¶ Matins:  Matins: Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist and the health-care columnist at Slate, writes lucidly about medical-malpractice litigation. The tort-based system is broken, but it works, sort of. Dr Sanghavi likens it to a casino — terrifying doctors as a class while overcompensating a handful of plaintiffs — but he also attributes significant drops in patient injuries to lessons learned. (via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: Two public spaces that people will know better from photographs than from visits: The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (when and if) and the White House. The latter, which is indeed a house, requires periodic replacement therapy, in the form of “redecoration,” a word that, Martin Filler tells us, Jacqueline Kennedy didn’t like. (via Felix Salmon and The Morning News)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon reminds us that nothing is riskier than a market in which everyone shuns risk.

¶ Tierce: Muscato remembers his family’s observance of Veteran’s Day.

¶ Sext: Two pieces that were printed side-by-side in the Times, and ought to have appeared in the same fashion online. Food colleagues Kim Severson and Julia Moskin are Jack Sprat and his wife about Thanksgiving. For Ms Severson, it is all about turkey. For Ms Moskin, the turkey is a turkey. The bitchery is quite amiable.

¶ Nones: We’re not quite sure why the offer would help negotiations along, but the UK will return 45 square miles of sovereign territory on Cyprus to — to whom? We can remember when Cyprus was in the news every day. Remember Archbishop Makarios?  (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Dan Hill’s review of Alain de Botton’s Heathrow book, A Week at the Airport, is long and serious but hugely compelling, inspired to be challenging where the book under review leaves off. For example, after quoting the passage about an interview with an airline CEO that stressed the fact that neither the CEO nor Mr de Botton works in a profit-making industry, Mr Hill cocks an eyebrow. (City of Sound; via The Tomorrow Museum)

¶ Compline: David Dobbs argues for replacing the “vulnerability” model of genetic variation with an “orchid” model. The older thinking holds that variants increase their carriers’ vulnerability to disorder. The new idea acknowledges vulnerability but also inverts it, seeing heightened access to special skills. (The Atlantic)

¶ Matins: “Terrifyingly cavalier” — we expect that Elizabeth Kolbert is right to respond to SuperFreakonomics with alarm. Shooting SO₂ aerosols into the atmosphere through an eighteen-mile hose does not sound like a promising solution to the problem of global warming. The Two Steves look to be in need of adult supervision! (The New Yorker)

¶ Lauds: In the future, will the great nudes of fine art sport fig leaves and other coverings that, as the spectator desires, may be made to fall away? Does Marcel Duchamp’s rather nasty peepshow, Étant Donnés, cap a Renaissance tradition? Blake Gopnik’s second blush. (Washington Post; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Steve Tobak addresses a home truth: “Don’t Make Your Customers Deal With Your Problems.” He’s talking to business people, of course, but we substitute “readers” for “customers” and go from there. (Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: Eric Patton writes about the trip to Rome that he took with his parents last month. (It was last month, wasn’t it?) (SORE AFRAID)

¶ Sext: Rudolph Delson has been making his way through the library of vice-presidential memoirs. Yesterday, he reached Tricky Dick. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: It isn’t very neighborly of Cambodia’s Hun Sen to welcome Thai renegade (and former prime minister) Thaksin Shinawatra into his cabinet, as an economic adviser — and on the eve of a regional summit, at that! Thailand has recalled its ambassador, and its government “has expressed anger and embarrassment over the deal.” (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Aleksandar Hemon fumes and steams about the posthumous publication of Nabokovian fragments. We can see why: the great writer intended for unfinished works to be destroyed at his death (in 1977). But the intentions were very naive, and possibly insincere: surely Nabokov was capable of destroying them himself after realizing that he would not live to finish his last project. (Slate; via Arts Journal)

¶ Compline: Simon Baron-Cohen argues that the elimination of a distinct Asperger syndrome diagnosis from the next edition of the standard psychiatric handbook (the DSM) — a move under consideration by the editors — would be premature at best. (NYT)

¶ Matins: Paul Krugman addresses our most dangerous problem: the growing power of a right-wing rump without any interest in governing and with every intention of preventing others from governing: “the GOP has been taken over by the people it used to exploit. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, who “became a teenager in 1972,” fears that the Internet has not been a positive force for popular culture. He seems troubled by the fact that it makes too much old stuff too easy to get, thus reducing the need for new stuff. (BBC News; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon disagrees with Wall Street Journal writers on the subject of Ken Lewis’s “mettle.”

¶ Tierce: Meryl Gordon’s discussions with some of the Marshall Trial jurors makes for fascinating reading at Vanity Fair.

¶ Sext: Choire Sicha remembers “vividly” where he was when The Wall Fell — although he didn’t know a thing about it at the time. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: George Packer reminds us why the Wall fell when it did, in a piece about the uniqueness of 1989 in Europe. (The New Yorker)

¶ Vespers: Tim Adams talks about Alan Bennett‘s new play, The Habit of Art — a little. Mostly he appreciates a writer who, against all the odds, has become a beloved fixture in Britain. (Guardian)

¶ Compline: Jonah Lehrer registers a new study about the “privileged” sense of smell. (Frontal Cortex)

¶ Matins: Ezra Klein (whom we only first heard about yesterday, has obtained a collection of charts that compare medical costs in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. (Washington Post; via Marginal Revolution)

The health-care reform debate has done a good job avoiding the subject of prices.

¶ Lauds: Maria Popova writes about the strange mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. (Good)

¶ Prime: Jay Goltz considers his entrepreneurial constitution. (You’re The Boss)

¶ Tierce: In the summer of 1934, Wall Street lawyer Phelan Bouvier wrote to his wife, Edith, then summering as usual in East Hampton, to inform her of his dire economic situation. As an “Exchange Specialist,” Bouvier watched as his clients were mowed down, not by the Depression, but by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Thus was the stage set for Grey Gardens. (Letters of Note)

¶ Sext: Oy! Used caskets for sale, at craigslist. (You Suck at Craigslist)

¶ Nones: In a Milan court, 23 Americans have been convicted in absentia of kidnapping, and are considered fugitives in Italy. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: George Pelecanos’s introduction to the NYRB reprint of Don Carpenter’s 1966 Hard Rain Falling has been published at The Rumpus.

¶ Compline: We thought that women’s residences were a thing of the past. Not so! Hilary Stout writes about the Webster Apartments, the Brandon Residence. and even a place named after Joan of Arc. (NYT)

Bon weekend à tous!

¶ Matins: Tim Carmody writes about Love in the Time of Twitter, a rebuttal of sorts of David Brooks’s much-discussed column about, well, how texting murdered romance. (Snarkmarket; NYT; Washington Post)

¶ Lauds: Why did the revival of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs close a week after opening (and several weeks of previews)? Patrick Healy analyzes the changes in audience expectations that doomed the production. (NYT)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon encourages Lloyd Blankfein, and other future former heads of Goldman Sachs, to retire into quiet private life. Their predecessors’ post-Goldman careers have been anything but stellar — unless we’re talking asteroids that crash and burn. (Felix Salmon)

¶ Tierce: Scout’s fantastic follow-up to his entry on the Owls of PS 110: the principal saw it and asked Scout if he’d like to take a closer look from up on the roof. Very cool. (Scouting New York)

¶ Sext: Muscato wishes “a happy 117th birthday to dizzy screen favorite Alice Brady,” and why not? (Café Muscato)

¶ Nones: BBC Commentator Paul Wood observes that the capture, by Israeli marines, of Iranian weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon, heralds hostilities to come. (BBC)

¶ Vespers: Colm Tóibín is into villanelles lately, and he has taken inspiration from a champion hurler. (London Review Blog)

¶ Compline: Like it or not, neuroscience is going to rebuild ethics from scratch. Philosophy, moral codes — in the dumper. You only thought that you knew right from wrong; in fact, the difference between good and evil is highly contextual. (Frontal Cortex)

Beginning today, the full text of the Daily Office appears at Portico. To continue reading the entry for a given hour, simply click on it, or click here to see today’s entire Daily Office.

¶ Matins: Manisha Verma’s essay on Jon Stewart’s effectiveness as a de-fogger suggests that Comedy Central may have discovered the cure for television. (3 Quarks Daily; via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: The sale of the Lehman Brothers art collection, although it brought in twice the projected total, demonstrates the wishful thinking behind much art investing. Quite aside from the fact that Lehman was not in the business of purchasing artworks in order to profit from their resale (as indeed it was supposed to be doing with its other investments), the proceeds of the sale are but a drop in the bucket of Lehman’s bankruptcy — $1.35 million as against $250 billion. (Bloomberg; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Steve Tobak doesn’t buy the theory, advanced by The Daily News, that Galleon-Scandal insiders Hector Ruiz and Bob Moffit were lured to their doom by a comely lass called Danielle Chiesi — but that’s only because he doesn’t think that she’s much of a “cheerleader.” (The Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: Michael Williams looks back to the days when he delivered firewood on autumn weekends. (A Continuous Lean)

¶ Sext: Meanwhile, Choire Sicha takes his lorgnette (or is a loupe?) to a new line from Michael Bastian that Michael Williams probably won’t be covering: Homeless Chic. $525 just for long underwear! (The Awl)

¶ Nones: The man who helped to take “primitive people” off the map, Claude Lévi-Strauss, died on Friday. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: A long appreciation of Cheever’s Journals from Geoff Dyer — a writer of very similar lyrical gifts. Mr Dyer persuasively ties Cheever’s craftsmanship as a published writer to his repressed homosexuality, and sees both as prisons. (Guardian; via Critical Mass)

¶ Compline: Nick Paumgarten advises us to abandon our hopes for multitasking, which “doesn’t work. You just perform each task less efficiently.” (The New Yorker)

¶ Matins: The editors of The Awl analyze today’s NYC ballot, and render a nice distinction between “douchebaggery” and “dickslappery.” By Frank Rich’s account, things were much more exciting upstate — until just before his column went to press. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Two sensationally (if unintentionally) amusing write-ups for coming art shows downtown: Avant-Guide to NYC: Discovering Absence and Crotalus Atrox (Or Fat Over Lean).  (ArtCat)

¶ Prime: The economics of Swedish meat balls — which we share for the woo-hoo fun of being in completely over our heads! (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Eric Patton sighs over the beauty of Italian, while collecting a nice armload of local street signs for you to puzzle out. (SORE AFRAID)

¶ Sext: In case David Drzal’s Book Review rave didn’t convince you that William Grimes’s Appetite City is an absolute must-read, we’re sure that Jonathan Taylor’s more expansive review at Emdashes will do the job.

¶ Nones: Did they settle that thing in Honduras? Maybe yes, maybe no. But one thing is certain: the Micheletti coup did a number on Honduran business. (NYT)

(At first, we believed that ousted president Manuel Zelaya was an idiot. Over time, we came to appreciate the fact that Roberto Micheletti used to be his mentor.)

¶ Vespers: Daniel Menaker considers Tim Page’s Parallel Play, an expansion of the New Yorker piece in which Mr Page shared his relief at finally having been diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome. (Barnes & Noble Review; via  The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: Being a terrible driver may mean that you’re not going to develop Parkinson’s! (Wired Science; via The Morning News)

Quatorze is a god. You should be so lucky as to have him put your house in order.

¶ Matins: Happy Hallowe’en from Brooks Peters! (An Open Book)

Among many other virtues, he is a source of great and abiding courage. “Done,” he would say, meaning not only that there would be no more discussion about, say, the silver tray with the dented gallery, but that the object would no longer be on the premises by sundown.

¶ Lauds: A slideshow of Harlem-infused images by Ralph de Carava, who died the other day at the age of 89. (Los Angeles Times)  A video of Ingmar Bergman’s FÃ¥rö retreat, soon to be an artists’ colony. (W) (via Arts Journal)

The stuff that we took up to HousingWorks was the merest sidelight on the day’s activities. And yet it was my only exercise. The rest of the time, I watched Quatorze while he assembled the temporary bookshelf, or cleared the hall closet of document boxes, or hung pictures in improbable corners.

¶ Prime: Floyd Norris very reasonably argues that the solution to the high-pay stink on Wall Street is to curb its high revenues. He points to inflated charges, business concentration, reliance upon overly-complex instruments, tax evasion, and excessive risk-taking as unseemly practices that, if curtailed, might bring bonuses back down to earth. (NYT)

Best of all, I did not watch while Quatorze shepherded the document boxes to the storage unit. No! I stayed home. I stayed home, and piled the big art books onto the new temporary bookshelf. While he dealt with the boxes, and the driver of the moving van, and the Shining-like atmosphere at the Moribunda Beach Club.

¶ Tierce: The world’s tallest treehouse — complete with basketball court. Looking at the pictures makes us feel much better about our place. (inhabitat; via The Infrastructurist)

The temporary bookshelf is a colossal (and not very well-made) number from Home Depot that I bought when I learned that the bookshelf that I really want will take “months” for Scully & Scully to deliver. On or about the joyful day of its arrival, the steel shelving will go to the storage unit, where I’m sure it will be very helpful.

¶ Sext: Wagner’s Ring — in 45 seconds. (via OperaMagazine.nl; thanks, Fossil!)

While Quatorze was setting it up, though, I was appalled that I could not remember the name for the Eighties vogue for industrial fixtures in high-end home decorating. It came to me while he was at the storage unit, and when I told him what it was, he couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten, too: “High Tech.” The fact that more than 25 years have passed since then, together with the fact that the term was long ago appropriated by people (computer users and others) with a better claim to it, may explain our oblivion.

¶ Nones: Bans on stitched clothing and on alcohol will make the spread of swine flu at this year’s hajj a lot easier. (NYT)

And so the Great Domestic Reorientation of 2009 comes to an end — and, with it, these hybrid entries.

¶ Vespers: A very brisk but fully-packed  review of Ted Striphas’s The Late Age of Print,  at Survival of the Book.

Next week, the new, shorter Daily Office will continue on its own, while Dear Diary entries will no longer be interrupted by pesky blockquotes.

¶ Compline: A new book, The Other Side of Sadness, by George Bonanno, more or less tosses the idea of “working through grief” out the window. Most people mourn briefly, and then return to normal life. This is okay. (XXfactor; via The Morning News)

The longer Daily Office will reappear in January, but not here — at Portico, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary at some point early in the New Year. (If you can tell me the date, and back it up, there’s $50 in it for you. This offer does not apply to persons named Megan O’Neill.)

Bon weekend à tous!

Nothing of interest happened today. My brain felt a bit more like cottage cheese, and worked almost as badly. Happily, it was not called upon to do much of anything.

¶ Matins: Forget taking someone out to dinner and spending a few hours across a white tablecloth, making conversation. Don’t even bother dressing up. Foraging is the new dating game, and you may have to eat something strange and new. (NYT)

The greater part of the afternoon was spent printing Dymo labels, pasting them onto CD sleeves, breaking down jewel boxes (slipping CDs into sleeves and removing all the “art”), and throwing the plastic away. It doesn’t sound like much, but in the time that it took me to process about 150 CDs, I listened to all of Weinberger’s Schwanda, all of Don Giovanni, and the finale of Tannhäuser. And then I listened to nothing. I listened to nothing for almost long enough to play yet another opera. Laziness had little to do with my not playing yet another opera.

¶ Lauds: Lawrence Pollard reviews some of the more outrageous cases of vandalizing artworks, and ponders Pierre Pinoncelli’s claim that sometimes it’s the destruction of a work of art that’s the work of art. (BBC)

The idea, of course, is to save room; at least three CDs (and their attendant paperwork) will fit in the space occupied by one jewel box.

¶ Prime: Why does the Windows 7 upgrade cost so much? (And take forever to install?) Because, Bob Cringely says, Microsoft doesn’t want you to buy it. (I, Cringely)

In the morning, I had an insight about the future of the Daily Office. It was more of a vision, really; I could see how things would be. Will be, when I return to regular programming after my birthday. I may ease into it in the mean time. Watch for sneak previews.

¶ Tierce: Choire Sicha swoons over samurai. “Hello, Volcano Coat!” Those who forget history may be doomed to wearing it. (The Awl)

In the afternoon, I made the mistake of answering the phone. I was in no shape for a phone call, and my friend, not surprisingly, thought that I was angry and short. I didn’t think that I was either, but I knew that I was very impatient, and I was impatient not with my friend but with the very idea of talking. I could not support conversation in my current state of fatigue.

¶ Sext: Nell Boeschenstein rewrites “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for the Teens: it’s real-estate listings that fire her dreams, not diamonds. Beneath the humor, a poignant piece about the heartbreaking unattainability of truly desirable housing. (The Morning News)

My friend asked me why I was so tired, and how was I tired. Was it mental, physical? I’d say (although this didn’t occur to me on the phone) that it’s existential. As I said the other day, I’m often sick of life these days; I’ve had a surfeit. I can only take so much existence. Especially when existence involves moving shopping bags from one side of the room to the other, in order to make space for boxes. Oh, and I am no longer 30.

¶ Nones: Michael Clemens disputes the “brain drain” scenarios that developing countries often complain about. More Philippine nurse in the United States, for example, means that are more nurses in the Philippines than there are in Britain. (Foreign Policy, via  Marginal Revolution)

What I’m engaged in is not your ordinary household project. I’m cleaning out the place for the rest of my life, acknowledging that many of my possessions are no longer necessary. Which possessions? If only it were a matter of drawing up a list. I don’t really know why it isn’t a matter of drawing up a list, but I know that it isn’t. 

¶ Vespers: Tom Nissley interviews NYRB Books editor Edwin Frank, and notes that his sponsor, Amazon, will sell you a full set of the imprint’s offerings at a thousand dollars off! (Omnivoracious; via Maud Newton)

Never mind what tomorrow may bring. Nay, will almost certainly bring. Friday, neither. Kathleen will be away for the weekend, so she’ll be spared the convalescence, which, as everyone knows, can be uglier than what brought it on.

¶ Compline: In a surprisingly brief entry, Jonah Lehrer cogently explains pleasure, beauty, attentiveness, idealism, and appetite in terms of a common denominator: dopamine. (Frontal Cortex)

The day would have ended a lot more pleasantly if the clown who works relief on Wednesdays in the package room hadn’t decided to close up shop on the early side, without letting anybody know. I went downstairs at 7:30 — the package room closes at 8 — clutching three package slips and the agreeable anticipation of reclaiming a piece of dry cleaning. Upon encountering the locked door, my blood ran toxic with frustration. I was too far gone for anger.

Thank heaven for Quatorze!

One of those deeply satisfying day-in-the-life novellas could have been written about my morning, afternoon, and evening, thanks to a note that I found in my inbox when I got round to looking at it in the late afternoon. Even without the note, it would have been a rich day, from a narrative standpoint. How could it not be? The very idea of lugging myself down to ABC Carpet at eleven-something in the morning, and on a rainy day, too. In the early stages of responding to a flu shot!

¶ Matins: Elizabeth Kolbert considers Cass Sunstein’s latest book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, and, in general, agrees that the Internet has helped to make this a Misinformation Age. She points out that being fair and balanced about people like the “birthers” can be self-defeating. 

The most plausible explanation for this dark, post-Enlightenment turn is unavailable to Sunstein; so hard is he trying to be nonpartisan that he can’t see the nuts for the trees. Several decades ago, a detachment of the American right cut itself loose from reason, and it has been drifting along happily ever since. 

(The New Yorker) 

Quatorze had found a very inexpensive rug for our bedroom. When it was unfolded on the floor, my first thought was that Kathleen wouldn’t look twice at this rug. My second thought was that the background, a muted grey-blue, was really rather dingy, and that Kathleen would actively dislike it. Apprised of these reservations, Kathleen nevertheless plumped for purchase. So we looked at another rug, one that was nearly twice as expensive. Curiously, the second rug, which had a lot of hanger appeal, made Quatorze’s choice look quite a bit more appealing. (This was not a trick engineered by my friend, I’m pretty sure; although, if it was, I’m tremendously impressed, so not to worry!) By now, I had written a story for the rug, a story that I would tell myself every day when I walked on it: This rug was left to me by someone in my father’s family who spent her entire life in Clinton, Iowa.

¶ Lauds: Joanne McNeil doesn’t think much of Lars von Trier. “He’s just clever enough to come up with an idea that could be a great art film, but too thick to follow through with it.” In case you’re thinking of sitting through Antichrist. (Tomorrow Museum)

You wait, though: on Friday, after Quatorze and I have completed the ordeal of laying the rug in the bedroom (which needn’t be described in advance), I’ll be in love with its Victorian marigolds and chrysanthemums.

¶ Prime: Jeffrey Pfeffer writes about the difficulty of identifying core competence. “The question of what businesses to be in and what to stay away from is one of the fundamental questions of business strategy, and it’s important for both individuals and companies.” (The Corner Office)

There was a fracas when we tried to leave the store. It turned out that I hadn’t paid for the pad that will underlie the rug. (I hadn’t been asked to.) Quatorze cleared it all up, but for at least seven and a half minutes — at least, mind you; no need to specify exactly! — I was the client from hell.

¶ Tierce: The top-ten rediscovered photographs. Among others, Helen Keller, Edward VII, and Anne Frank’s one true love, Peter Schiff. (listverse, via The Online Photographer)

The ABC staff who do all the work (and who don’t wear suit jackets) hailed a taxi for us, and we took Park Avenue all the way up to Yorkville. The ride was not egregiously slow, but when we finally drove through Grand Central Terminal (as one does, on the futuristic flyways of 1912), I felt as one does after an hour in the dentist’s chair.

¶ Sext: The top-ten rules of the Internet. The 35 rules of the Internet. The many, many rules of 4chan. (via /b/).

We dumped the rug and the underlying pad at the apartment and headed to the Café d’Alsace for lunch. Then we walked uphill to the 92nd Street Y, for two hours of Schubert.

¶ Nones: A French court determines that Scientology is fraudulent. But the sect has not been barred from operation. (NYT)

When I was a young man in Houston, Sharon Robinson was a rising cello soloist whose parents both played with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. She was tall and blonde and very much not one’s idea of a concert musician. Although she is a year younger than I am, she is still beautiful. And a great cellist, too — especially at the bottom, where, looks to the contrary notwithstanding, she likes to growl. She was playing with her husband, Jaime Laredo, and her chamber trio partner, Joseph Kalichstein, a program of  both of Schubert’s big piano trios.

¶ Vespers: Orhan Pamuk reads “My Russian Education,” an excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory that was published as fiction in 1948. (The New Yorker)

I can’t remember the last time that I listened to serious music in the middle of the afternoon. Yes, I can: it was at Tanglewood, and Sylvia McNair sang a cycle of songs written by André Previn to texts by Toni Morrison — who was there. More recently, now I think of it, there was an hilarious misadventure on 57th Street, featuring a very red piano.

¶ Compline: Admit it: you’ve always wondered if one of your ancestors screwed around with a Neanderthal. Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute, is sure of it. (Short Sharp Science)

Quatorze and I repaired to the apartment for a pot of tea. While we sipped, he asked where the temporary bookshelf was. (You’ll find out what that means soon enough.) I said that I hadn’t heard, but I reminded the both of us that it had been ordered not even two weeks ago. Shortly after he left, I received a note from Home Depot saying that it is on its way. Eventually, a handsome hardwood case from England will take its place, but that won’t be for months.

Eventually, I found myself at my desk again, and there it was, this note that I’m not going to talk about. I’ll say two things: (1) It concerned my writing and (2) there was not only no offer of any kind but no promise of an offer. Nevertheless, it was a gratifying note, and it made me very happy that I do what I do, writing thousands of words every day. (Oh, dear, did I say thousand-s?)

Chatting on Google with Nom de Plume, shortly after lunch, I blurted that I was “sick of life.” I knew that I did not mean this in its operatic sense. I did not want to “end it all” &c &c. It took a moment, though, to realize that I meant it quite literally. Like a little boy who has eaten too many pieces of birthday cake, I was sick of too much.  

¶ Matins: Do you want to settle in one of the “best” cities in the United States — or is it just a city of whites that draws you? Aaron Renn at newgeography

The answer, obviously, was to let nature take her course &c &c. I must rest.

¶ Lauds: Ann Temkin likes to move the furniture around. This means that that the art of which she is the MoMA curator moves comes and goes. Starry Night stays put, though. (NYT)

By the way, when I write, “I must rest,” do you understand that I am speaking in the past tense? “The answer was to let nature take her course; I must rest.” Meaning: I would have to rest. I’m not sure that even English readers hear it properly anymore. But in fact the past tense of “must” is “must,” not — you’ll be happy to learn this — “musted.” Or “merst.”

(That’s all the fun with “must” that we’re going to have tonight.)

¶ Prime: No more McDonald’s in Iceland — a casualty of the country’s economic  collapse. (via Marginal Revolution) It’s not much consolation to know that Icelandic tourists can pick up a Royal Deluxe at the chain’s new outpost at the Louvre. (NYT)

If I took things easy — to get back to the “me” part of this entry — I’d feel better; much better; and not at all “sick of life.”  Sure enough, as the day wore on, I felt less and less doomed. As it happened, I had a physical exam scheduled for this afternoon. That can’t have contributed to any well-rested feelings. The doctor let me know what he thought about my health by saying that he didn’t see anything wrong with me but/and declining to weigh me. Having survived the exam, though (pending blood and urine tests, of course), I walked back up Second Avenue with a springier step.

¶ Tierce: “Do Exactly What It Says.” Instructions for burning Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in effigy on Hallowe’en, in case you’re interested. “The demon adds a nice touch.” Or, bring a fire hose. ( The Awl)

If I hadn’t been genuinely tired, I might have laughed, because even during the morning of sickness of life, I’d known that my state of mind was fleetingly likely to disappear quite soon, and I’d refused to indulge in any operatic decision-making. I did not make any pacts with myself to take rash action of some kind or other. I did not promise my patron saint that I would live on ramen for a month, or stop speaking, once and for all, to someone I don’t like (“why pretend?”).

¶ Sext: Peter Jon Lindberg complains about “Bad Music in Public Places.” Read through to the end; he has a sound-designer friend who puts together playlists that you can buy at iTunes. (via The Morning News)

On the contrary: I knew that I’d feel better if I just held out and managed not to make things worse with one of those operatic coups that would probably not come to mind so readily if I did not know anything about opera. (See Stendhal on “love.”)

¶ Nones: Will Hugo Chávez change international relations? Or will his head end up on a pole? Either way, here’s something for your Chávez scrapbook. (BBC) If your scrapbook is devoted, rather, to memories of lost grandeur, here’s a map of what Turkey ought to look like, to some, anyway. (Strange Maps)

What was even funnier, except not really, was wondering how many of my inky black moods and states of rage would have occurred if I’d been well-rested. Over the years, I mean. How many therapists would not have required talking to.

¶ Vespers: R Crumb discusses his Gnosticism and the making of his graphic Genesis. (Vanity Fair)

This revisionist history of my mental health was checked, to some degree, by the recollection that hormones fall off as one gets older. This makes many people sad, but for me it has brought nothing but relief. My version of Augustine’s famous “not yet” prayer would have been, “Lord, please calm my endocrine system — right now!”

¶ Compline: Steve Toback has been worried about multasking-induced intelligence sinkholes for over ten years, and he sees no reason to change his mind.

At the moment, my mood is bright again, but I can tell that I’m still very tired. I fixed a nice-enough dinner, Elizabeth David’s Veal cauchoise. For some reason, I was watching Syriana in the kitchen when Kathleen got home. She hadn’t seen it, so I was explaining that now and then there’s a big explosion, while, all unthinking, I ignited the Calvados on the stove. I had bought a gigantic measuring cup — it must hold a quart — for this purpose, thinking that the small quantity of spirits that is usually called for to make a flambée would quickly give up its alcohol in a broad vessel that kept it shallow. This turned out to be correct.

It never occurred to me to foresee a culinary explosion, and in that I was correct as well. Indeed, one of the things that I love about igniting brandy and the other eaux fortes is that the flame is all bluff, a cool blue that just might burn a sheet of paper if you could dangle on in it with your third hand. (The real danger of igniting alcohol, I believe, is that the flame will go on to ignite a grease fire.) Kathleen, however, jumped, and had to walk away. She said that dinner was delicious, though, and she ate every bite.

My subject today is the Weekday Tragedy.

¶ Matins: In addition to the simple depletion of stocks, a new factor is contributing to the rise in the price of oil: the fall of the dollar, which dropped to $1.50 to the Euro yesterday. (Times)

Don’t worry; nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt. Money is very rarely lost! That’s what “weekday” means. It happens every day, and you get used to it, and then one day you wake up in a Tennessee Williams play.

¶ Lauds: This must have been fun: watching My Dinner with André with André in the room — and Wallace Shawn, too. (at Speakeasy)

An optimist says, “There is so much to do!” A pessimist says, “I’ll never work my way through all this crap.”

¶ Prime: More on Paul Volcker: according to the WSJ, he’s stage-managing a profound shift in the taxability of corporate debt, hitherto disastrously tax-free. Meanwhile, Harvard cleans up after Larry Summers. (via Felix Salmon)

The opportunist says, “I really want to finish Lorrie Moore’s amazing novel. How can I dash off a diary entry in a trice?

¶ Tierce: A slideshow of workspaces, many of them of the manly persuasion, photographed by Joseph Holmes. (via A Continuous Lean). Workophobes can hang out The Manhattan Street Corners. (via MetaFilter)

I’d be only to happy to lavish an hour or two on the entry that I planned this morning, when the day was still potential. “I’ll write about boxes,” I said to myself with a smile, as I got dressed. By “boxes,” I meant the rattan storage boxes that every housewares store on the Upper East Side used to stock.

¶ Sext: The Bronson Pinchot interview at Onion AVC. Something like Ali G, only for real. Will he work in that town again? (via everywhere, but we found it at The Awl)

Not that I can find any online! They’re square or rectangular (but oblong in either case), and they come in a solacing range of  colors, from khaki to evergreen. Nothing primary; no pastels.

¶ Nones: Who knew that India has its own Article 301? The Indian Government won’t allow an adaptation of Indian Summer to be filmed (in India, anyway) unless sex scenes involving Edwina Mountbatten (Cate Blanchett) and Jawaharlal Nehru (Irrfan Khan) are removed — which effective quashes the project for now. (via Arts Journal)

The genius of the product is to make your bureau drawers presentable, sans bureau. A sort of exoskeletal dresser. Not that I use them for clothing, although of course you could. I already have real dressers for clothing. What I don’t have is a room filled with forty-five filing cabinets.

¶ Vespers: John Self encourages us to give a second thought to Tao Lin’s Shoplifting From American Apparel. (Asylum)

Enough product placement. I was going to write about the things that I found in the boxes as I went through them today, with an emphasis on the stuff that I threw away. I looked forward to writing about this almost as much as I looked forward to having done it.

¶ Compline: Just in time for the collapse of mass aviation, the floating airport! (It’s very interesting to note that the Sierra Club has no opposition to this idea.) (The Infrastructurist)

Sadly, I never looked forward to the actual doing, and so other stuff happened instead. Productive stuff! I wrote two pages for Portico (both of them brevissimo, but it’s the thought that counts, these days). I cooked a lovely dinner. I did a lot of other useful stuff that would be toenails to talk about. And I did open one box. I opened the box, and I stuffed the contents of a shopping bag into it. This was not the operation that I’d had in mind in the buoyant morning. I’d had such hopes! &c &c!

If only tomorrow were another day. But it’s not tomorrow; it’s today. And I’m off to the movies at some point, with who knows what free-style frittering afterward. The richly fascinating stories that my boxes have to tell — who knows when they’ll be told?

Bon weekend à tous!

If I had my druther’s, I’d still be in the living room, listening to Mahler’s Third and reading from the Book of Cake, where the story has finally passed the moment at which Lady E accepts the Duke of York. Not that a shred of evidence of romantic feelings on the lady’s part is presented. Although it’s true that any display of a future queen’s falling in love must be smothered by propriety, William Shawcross does nothing to preclude cynical conclusions. One has to remember that no one could have imagined that the groom was the brother of an abdicator. I hope that my attempt at discretion has rendered this paragraph intriguingly opaque.

¶ Matins: Why Paul Volcker wants to restore some form of Glass-Steagall separation between retail and merchant banking. (Over Larry Summers’s dead body, we suspect.) Why Arianna Huffington wants to curb our enthusiasm for “small-bore, high-drama stories” of the “balloon boy” variety.

Probably just “opaque,” though. “Irritatingly opaque,” very likely.

¶ Lauds: Every once in a while, along comes an illustrator who outdoes photography for documentary punch, by incorporating moods that no shutter can capture. Matthew Cook is one such. (via The Best Part)

Quatorze spent the afternoon with me, helping out with this and that on the home improvement front. Nothing could induce me to enumerate our projects (dreamed up by me and executed by him), but drills, safety pins, and twisties were involved. A lot of CDs were pulled down from the tops of shelving, and stacked neatly on the outgoing dining table. For dessert, so to speak, we gathered up three bits of furnishing for which there is no room at the moment and taxied them down to the storage unit.

¶ Prime: An Andrew Ross Sorkin moment (to whet your appetite for (a) his book (b) antacid tablets), presented by Felix Salmon: “We’ve wasted our crisis.” “How on earth did Paulson think this was okay?” Clicking through today’s Counterparties entry: “Need I name the source of the quote?” 

At the storage unit, Quatorze asked if it was true that some of the units were used by prostitutes to turn tricks. Mon Dieu — as if I would know! Like everyone else in the world, I read the article in New York magazine (or somesuch) from a thousand years ago, in which it was alleged that some ladies of the evening keep their frocks in storage, and repair to their units for quick changes between Johns, but it is clear to me that having sex in a storage unit is a stunt — nobody does it (regularly) on a faute de mieux basis. Regular readers will remember that I used to call the storage unit “Westphalia” (“because that’s where detritus are”), but these days I call it the Moribundo Beach Club, because it combines the exiguity of a sand-plagued cabana with the charm of a morgue.

¶ Tierce: Book proposal for Scout: The Castles of Westchester am Rhein. Today: Castle Rock, in Garrison, with, among other things, a rather startlingly comprehensive view of West Point.

The home improvement is having a calming effect overall. I think that it is teaching me that anything really is possible.

¶ Sext: Cant words that (a) British office-workers and (b) Esquire’s editors dislike. When you’re through clucking at malatinisms and nursery-talk, have a gander at print ads that would fail to effectivate today’s markets. (via The Morning News) Department of Phew!: the FTC isn’t after us!

While Quatorze made a template of the top of the bottom half of the breakfront — there really is no top, so we have to have one made to measure — I fiddled with a caladium that I’ve been growing fond of for a couple of months. Although I have had caladiums before, they have never thrived as this plant is thriving, and I never had to tend one, beyond watering it. From time to time, I could say, you have to rope in the new leaves, which require the support of rudimentary treillage.

¶ Nones: Testing a conciliatory, pro-Kurdish law in Turkey, a judge ordered the release of PKK rebels who have not renounced their membership in the separatist organization.

(The last paragraph of this BBC story switched on a lightfbulb in the Editor’s brain: a terrorist is simply a nationalist who is out of power, speaking a language that flag-wavers understand but that cosmopolitans have either renounced or forgotten.)

There was much to learn about gathering the stems behind a cordon of string — two cordons, really. I saw that notching the poles would be a good idea, and it was. By the time I was through, an utterly ill-trained retriever had become a well-mannered Airedale.

¶ Vespers: Alexander Chee mixes up character flaws, Tarot Decks, and a brilliantly concise appreciation of Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings. Exemplary blogging!

He [Tomine’s protagonist, Ben] lacks that famous other creative writing hobgoblin, character consistency, in one way–he is absolutely inconsistent in his views–and yet that ends up being what the book is about: he has no core, except a shame at who he is that destroys all his relationships. THAT is his consistency, that is his ‘flaw’. And what’s more, this gap is precisely what creates the dramatic irony that moves the whole book along.

I asked Quatorze about finding a cachepot for the caladium. The first rule of cachepots is that they are never, ever large enough. To conceal the base of any robust house-plant, you have to grit your teeth and settle for nothing less than a bathtub. Quatorze’s rather depressing suggestion was eBay. I say that only because I find eBay depressing. Quatorze and Kathleen do not; for them, I’ve come to think, eBay is a delicious mix of The Wizard of Oz and Mystery Science Theatre.

¶ Compline: The coolness of this post-industrial transformation (in Vienna, no less) induces word failure. (via The Infrastructurist)

Now I am going to climb into bed with Lorrie Moore’s beautiful book, which is every bit as unreverencingly fresh as the Queen Mother was.

Stroking my beard, I realize with a moue that the barber took too much of it off at today’s trim. I thought that he was being a bit enthusiastic, but by the time this occurred to me there was no going back. I shall have to mention it to him next time. The barber who took care of me for years, until his retirement last year, never touched my beard with an electric razor — at my request. I don’t think that I can get away with that now; Willy is much younger and more determined to do things his own way. Even though I tip him even more. Absurdly more. Moue. 

¶ Matins: In an eminently sane reversal of Bushwah, the Justice Department will no longer harass medical marijuana networks in the fourteen states that permit them. Although the new position is unenthusiastic about marijuana use (to say the least), its rationale is noteworthy: the government has more important things to do.

Before Willy, I stopped in at Perry Process, where I also had to have, as nicely as possible, a few words. A few weeks ago, I asked about summer storage. Every spring, Kathleen sends her winter clothes off to be stored and then cleaned. And then delivered. I was told that the stuff would be ready at the end of my month. Imagine my displeasure when the doorbell rang on Saturday afternoon, as I was getting ready to welcome guests for brunch, in an apartment that was still at sixes and sevens — divided by two.

¶ Lauds: We are profoundly amused by the discomfort that R Crumb’s extremely literal illustration of the Book of Genesis is causing the fundies. Now they’ll understand why the Vatican forbade — forbade! — the independent reading of Scripture.

The real inconvenience was that Kathleen was in North Carolina, going through her late mother’s clothes, ironically enough. Having busted my major parts trying to impose a level of order on the apartment, the arrival of a heap of dry cleaning, poofed with tissue paper, came as a body blow. This afternoon, we agreed that a call beforehand — and, by the way, the 17th of October is not the “end of the month” — would be in order.

¶ Prime: There’s a movie in there somewhere — Iowa’s generous tax incentive to Hollywood may have been (gasp!) abused by filmmakers, and the program is on hold. Meanwhile (GASP!), right in our own backyard, stagehands at Carnegie Hall average almost $500K a year. (via Arts Journal)

I am telling you all of this to tickle you, because of course you cannot feel very sorry for me, beset as I am by such tribulations. Now, just imagine how self-righteously clueless the bailed-out investment bankers sound!

¶ Tierce: Must we? At his new New Yorker blog, Unquiet Thoughts, Alex Ross reminds us that “Für Elise” exists — not without a whiff of mystery. (But only a whiff.)

My friend Nom de Plume came in to town, and we had lunch. Then she went to her appointments and I made the aforementioned rounds, which I wrapped up with a visit to Eli’s, for to buy the makings of yet another quiche. When Nom was through with her schedule, she came to the apartment for tea, cake, and grilling — I don’t know how she puts up with my curmudgeonliness (and I’m not inquiring, either, by the way.)

¶ Sext: We’re sorry about not passing on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity yesterday — win a Norwegian Sweater from Ivy Style/LL Bean. Only a few hours remain to enter! If you miss that contest, there’s always the Critterati.

The best thing about the day, though, was sitting down at the laptop in the living room and writing a page for Portico. Yes, it was very nice — a massive relief, really — just to get it done. But it was awfully pleasant to do, and that was an even more massive relief, because what with all this apartment brouhaha I was wondering if I’d lost my taste for the fine tedium of writing a thousand words of connected text.

¶ Nones: The stalemate in Tegucigalpa (Zelaya: “insulting”; Micheletti: “agenda of insurrection’) is sending Hondurans in search of miracles, preferably one worked by Our Lady of Suyapa.

There was a little more to it than that. I’d been shying away from the laptop, owing to old WiFi connection problems that I really don’t have anymore, thanks to J—. Not that it matters much if I’ve got an Internet connection when what I’m doing is the equivalent of typing something on a few sheets of paper. Eventually, yes, I have to transfer those sheets to a server somewhere, but even if the laptop had no connectivity, I could always make use of a flash drive thumb.

¶ Vespers: Garth Risk Hallberg reads Updike’s Maples stories backwards, to thrilling effect. (The short-story equivalent of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal?)

It’s possible that I’m beginning to relax from a very ambitious summer. Also, the date for our Christmas party is set, and clouds of mental fog lifted with that clarification.

¶ Compline: Simon Roberts dips into Marc Girouard and fetches up a pearl of insight about the transformation of suburbs in the Eighteenth Century — everywhere: “The suburbs became the inverse of the hub – sites of inactivity, lack of productivity.”

In short, I’m feeling immensely, comfortably bourgeois. Exciting problems with the dry cleaner and the barber promise to be brought under control. The piles of crap on the old dining table, currently marooned in the foyer, dwindle visibly. It’s true that I forgot the cheese again, and made a quiche Lorraine by mistake. Texture aside, though, it was pretty good!

Tomorrow is a longer beard!