¶ Matins: Here’s hoping that no regular readers of The Daily Blague were under the illusion that the Cold War was “won” — and by US! Andrew Kramer reports on the cold Cold War.

¶ Lauds: The year in music: Steve Smith sums up 2008.

¶ Prime: The last thing you need is yet another blog to check out, but I’m afraid that you’ll have to make room on your list for Scouting New York — at least if you have any interest whatsoever in this burg of ours. The site is kept by a professional location scout — what a dream job! (There are no dream jobs, but we don’t have to know that.

¶ Tierce: A story that I’m afraid I was expecting to see: “State’s Unemployment System Buckles Under Surging Demand.” That the outage was repaired later the same day is not the point.

¶ Sext: Will nonbelievers spend eternity at the back of a bus? 800 London buses will begin bearing “atheist” messages, such as “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Sarah Lyall reports.

¶ Nones: Oops! Another I-Lied accounting story, this one involving Satyam, the outsourcing firm that provides back-office services to “more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies.” Heather Timmons reports, with Bettina Wassner.

¶ Vespers: Don’t ask what has taken me so long, but I’ve gotten round at last to adding Koreanish to the blog roster. It is kept by novelist Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh. Yesterday, he posted an entry from this years MLA convention in San Francisco.

¶ Compline: Stanley Fish lists his favorite American movies of all time. Of the ten, only Vertigo makes my list. I don’t begin to understand the appeal of John Wayne, and I could never omit Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, or Fred Astaire, not to mention Preston Sturgis.

Oremus…

§ Matins. There appear to be two tiers to the problem. The first is made up of former SSRs, such as Ukraine and Georgia, which have “insulted” Russia by seeking closer relations with the West, through NATO. The second is made up of the Western European countries, who are learning to shiver about something besides the old nuclear threat.

Meanwhile, Dubya’s reading himself to sleep with My Pet Toga.  

§ Lauds. At least Steve has done his homework: I have yet to write up a whole bunch of evenings at the Museum.

Of Steve’s ten best classical albums, the one that I’m curious about is the recording of Johanna Beyer’s Sticky Melodies. I don’t know a thing about it. Nor have I heard of the Astra Chamber Music Society. Makes me feel twelve years old just to say the name.

§ Prime. Yesterday’s photos stretched from the top of 63 Wall Street (now an apartment building, but an erstwhile office address of Prescott Bush) to a frozen fountain (oops!) in Sunnyside.

§ Tierce. Unemployment in New York State has risen from 5.7% to 6.1% since October; in the City, it has jumped from the same figure to 6.3%; it’s expected to keep climbing.

Of all the ideals that a civil society maintains, full employment is the one that most depends upon coherent state action. As the Postwar communist countries demonstrated, there are many ways to “do this wrong.” That’s no reason not to try to do it right.

§ Sext. Although I’m in complete accord with the sentiment, I find it a bit rude for an advert. The fact that christianists have terrible manners doesn’t excuse replying in kind. And surely there is no place for the imperative mood in humanist announcements.

§ Nones. And the explanation that explains nothing (so far):

In the four-and-a-half page letter distributed by the Bombay stock exchange, Mr. Raju described a small discrepancy that grew beyond his control. “What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew,” he wrote. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

Mr. Raju said he had tried and failed to bridge the gap, including an effort in December to buy two construction firms in which the company’s founders held stakes. Speaking of a “deep regret” and a “tremendous burden,” Mr. Raju said that neither he nor the co-founder and managing director, B. Rama Raju, had “taken one rupee/dollar from the company.” He said the board had no knowledge of the situation, nor did his or the managing director’s families.

You really have to wonder how this stuff works. How does someone like Mr Raju get away with something like this, year after year? Maybe the movie will tell us.

§ Vespers.

At the MLA, I meet a man who’s just delivered a paper on my first novel. We met 30 minutes after he finished.

I didn’t attend because I didn’t want him to be nervous, and later was told he was glad I wasn’t there.

We have a few awkward attempts at conversation, not because we don’t like each other but because I am his subject, in a sense. Most authors I know are a little uneasy at the MLA for this reason, for how at different times it feels like you’re a lab specimen who’s gotten loose. But also, he and a few other scholars at the event have assured me that I’m singular. I’m the only out gay male Korean American author.

§ Compline. But that’s the thing about top ten lists. They’re far too small to mean anything to anyone else. It’s only when lists include a hundred or more entries that a feeling of consensus emerges. Would Mr Fish compose the same list five years from now? For the sake of his mind’s suppleness, I hope not.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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