dietsch ::

Fung Wah Drama Festival

Because the Fung Wah bus is so cheap, it draws a lot of college-aged kids, young hipster types, and backpackers from all over the world. For this reason, I've joked with Jen that it won't be long before Fung Wah winds up in someone's first novel or in a song lyric by some up-and-coming band. I wasn't far off: Jim Behrle's Famous Monkey: The Fung Wah Drama Festival

More Wal-Mart hysteria

"Before the doors opened Friday, a car caught fire in the parking lot, police were called twice to restrain eager shoppers (and wound up restraining overzealous private security guards hired by Wal-Mart), and in their rush to get inside once the store opened, shoppers literally broke the door down." Congratulations, consumer America, this is the life you deserve.

Trampled for a DVD player

"Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance."

Future of the book

Today I read two articles discussing books and electronic publishing: Gary Wolf's piece for Wired about Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature, and Umberto Eco's lecture at Alexandria. I see some interesting parallels between the pieces, but I want to reread both before I can comment on them.

Eeeeeeee

"Rubin, unsuccessfully, kept trying to get Cash to make a version of Radiohead's 'Creep.'" The other remarkable quote from that article: "In preparation for the fifth disc in the American Recordings sequence, he recorded some 50 new songs after his wife, June Carter Cash, died in May. None of these songs appear on 'Unearthed.'" The girl wants me to add this to my Christmas list, but ain't no way I can wait a month, dammit.

French update

After stalling out a bit, I've returned to studying French. I ordered a copy of Easy French Reader, which has an ugly cover, I'll admit, but is still a good introductory book. The book is in three parts: Part I contains a set of dialogues between an American teenager, Christine, and her French friend Charles, both of whom live in Paris. Part II is a collection of essays, written in French, about figures from French history. Part III contains several short stories, from writers such as Zola, that are mostly intact but have a few edits to make the vocabulary more suitable for beginning readers. I'm still also working through French for Reading, but it's slow-going. The audience for that book is graduate students who need French to do study and research, and so the prose is academic, scientific, and, I think, stilted and dry. I found myself bogging down, so I wanted something a little less erudite. With my focus so squarely on written French, my pronunciation lags behind. That's okay to an extent; I don't foresee conversing in French in the near future, but I would like to read it. I do, however, want to begin developing an ear for the language so that I can understand, for example, the dialogue in French-language movies. Also, I'd eventually like to take a French class, and a head-start in verbal abilities will help. With that in mind, I've been working through the French-language activities offered as part of the BBC's languages series. Without buying the videos, of course, I can't view the Beeb's French programs, but the website offers interactive modules that allow you to listen to and practice conversational French. It's standard introductory material--asking for directions, ordering a drink or a meal, buying Metro tickets, inquiring about the price of a piece of merchandise--but it's a good start to picking up the sounds of French words.

Jumble jumble

It's a bit of a mess around here, as I'm trying to add stuff to this page. Gimme some time and I'll work it all out.

With a why-didn't-I-think-of-it title...

...Black Table decrypts the Chinatown bus that Jen and I have grown to love-hate.

Kean's New York photos

Here's something funny: A number of prominent blogs (Metafilter, BoingBoing, Gothamist) have linked to Kean Soo's photo pages from his recent visit to New York. Kean and his brother Meng were in town from Ottawa. What makes his page noteworthy is his organizational design; he's using a subway map to indicate the places he and his brother visited. I thought that seemed cool, but when I started reading, I saw his mention of the True Porn release party, and I suddenly remembered that I'd met Kean there, because I recalled a guy who had driven down from Ottawa with his brother. I didn't know anyone at the release party, and so I was wallflowering for a while. Kean was also hanging back a bit, and so we started talking. He signed one of the pages he'd drawn in the anthology for me. He's a good cartoonist, so go check out his work.

What I'm reading

You'll note a new Media option in the list of links. There I have a running list of what I'm reading and listening. My eventual goal is to have all that on the main page, but that's still down the road a bit.

Mousey-poo

In which Kelly Sue feeds shit to her husband.