Alex Turner - Hiding Tonight
And I will play the coconut shy
And win a prize even if it’s rigged
I won’t know when to stop
And you can leave off my lid, and I won’t even lose my fizz
I’ll be the polkadots type
I’ll know the way back, if you know the way
But if you are, I am quite alright hiding today
To Serve God and Wal-mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Bethany Moreton)
The story of Wal-mart is one that has been chronicled and reviewed in a glut of documentaries, books and throughout the culture in recent years. This book deconstructed the myth of Sam Walton creating an empire from his bootstraps and paints a more complex picture of timing, opportunity and government help that evolved from mom-and-pop origins to create the world’s largest retailer.
Where this book is extremely valuable, is the unpacking of the history of the U.S. during the post-war years. There’s an ethos that we’ve consumed as a culture that says the olden days prosperity came from a lot of self-help, when the reality was a lot of government aid birthed the prosperity of the Greatest Generation.
The problem of the book is that it was an upchuck of stories from the older, bygone days of Walmart rather than the modern state of the firm and how it operates in the global economy. That might not have been the desired focus and that’s why we get what we do now, but…that made it harder to read and eventually made me tune it out.
Still, it’s a worthwhile bookshelf book from the perspective of the historian seeking understanding to the ways that the myths of white populist Southerns have been promulgated beyond generations, as a lot of smaller towns have been propped up for decades by various schemes of investment made years ago and have left places that might have otherwise been impoverished as economic engines in their own right.
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.
Food, books and etc.
I’m several months in and still kicking. My gluten allergy is being contained now that I have a decent sense of what I can’t eat. It’s obviously a lot easier eating out in a real city with choices, but it gets more complicated when I go home (Christmas break was an adventure) or when I’m in a situation where I’m hungry, didn’t bring my own food and the options are scarce.
But I’ve always been pretty particular (read: picky) so now it’s just that I have a reason for it. Still my Operation Stop Eating Crap has been a major league success, I’d say.
Tonight: Chicken and Broccoli at the best Asian Fusion joint in the county.
ALSO: I am suffering through a post-Luther hangover. No more Luther until they start Series 3. No more Merlin until they start Series 5. I don’t watch anything else, because I don’t even like watching shows much less getting hooked on them but those two did it for me. Maybe it’s the accents. But alas, I see nothing on Netflix that appeals to me of late.
I’m overdue for a trip to the Denver Public Library, I’ll need to make that happen soon. Reading on the iPad has made it easier to acquire books in the hinterland, but it doesn’t seem to induce me to actually read them. Funny how that works?
Treppenwitz
Literally, ‘the wisdom of the stairs’. The striking reply that crosses one’s mind belatedly when already leaving, on the stairs. People are often angry because they did not have the fitting answer directly during a conversation. The term is old, but it was made popular by W. Lewis Hertslet who published his book in 1882 entitled ‘Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte’. In that book, he writes: “Like to a petitioner who is just leaving after an audience, a piquant, striking words occurs to history almost always delayed.”
If you get into these email, Facebook thumbs-up/thumbs-down settings, a paradoxical thing happens: even though you’re alone, you get into this situation where you’re continually looking for your next message, and to have a sense of approval and validation. You’re alone but looking for approval as though you were together—the little red light going off on the BlackBerry to see if you have somebody’s validation.
I make a statement in the book, that if you don’t learn how to be alone, you’ll always be lonely, that loneliness is failed solitude. We’re raising a generation that has grown up with constant connection, and only knows how to be lonely when not connected. This capacity for generative solitude is very important for the creative process, but if you grow up thinking it’s your right and due to be tweeted and retweeted, to have thumbs up on Facebook…we’re losing a capacity for autonomy both intellectual and emotional.
Sherry Turkle on ideas in her book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” in Fast Company. Yet another explanation of how Twitter and Facebook don’t understand the humanity of identity. (via gbattle)
I enjoyed Alone Together a great deal.
If There Is Something To Desire: One Hundred Poems (Pavlova)
Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.
The Book of Disquiet (Fernando Pessoa)
I simply cannot do this book justice by writing a review about it. It’s a complicated, non-linear set of sketches by Pessoa, a recluse who is the literary champion of Portugal. He created a variety of fictional characters that he wrote under, as his entire life — before he committed suicide — was spent alone with very little companionship to speak of.
This becomes clear as you read throughout The Book of Disquiet as Pessoa’s neurosis are placed fully in front of you throughout. Here’s a good review from NPR written two years ago that will introduce you to Pessoa’s work to you. The book is full of quotes that may indeed be memorable to you, but you’ll have to trudge through it to find these gems, as they’re rife but embedded beneath the prose.
The Book of Disquiet remains one of my favorite books of all-time, not because it’s the sort of book that you can finish to get a sense of accomplishment, but precisely because it offers you no such completion and no such solace. It’s just a book, with words and the ending is really about all of the dog-eared pages you leave strewn behind with memorable quotes that you don’t want to lose.
Drinking At The Movies (Julia Wertz)
I’d never read any kind of comic graphic anything before this one, but I read some list somewhere talking about the best books of 2010 and this was on the list. So I added it and when it showed up off my holds list at the library, I checked it out even though I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into.
Julia Wertz’s autobiographical story of leaving the west coast for the east coast was hilarious and entertaining from start to finish. In this book, she chronicles her life and career choices throughout that cause her to refocus and clearly must’ve led to something good in the end (this book) so it couldn’t have been all bad.
Her story involves breakups, lots of drinking, her aversion to dating and the concern of friends and family that her life is spiraling into a morass of decay. It gets better though, so stick with it. There isn’t some deeper secondary meaning to this one, it’s just a breezy entertaining biographical story worth checking out. Even if you have a general aversion to comic novels like me, this graphic memoir of one woman’s movement to adulthood will keep you occupied until you realize you’ve reached the end.
