This morning over thick dark coffee and toasted soft tack I recalled an article I'd read yesterday about an Army artillery unit now in northern Iraq. Off duty, the writer noted, the soldiers did rap pieces for one another. Rap, it seems, has replaced hard rock as the official music of young soldiers. This can't be good. This can't be good at all. Not, mind you, that I have any use for hard rock or guitar rock, but...*rap*? That's just...*wrong*. Just as rap itself is...*wrong*.

For all love, one can't have an imperial army listening to *rap*. Armies of empire must listen to techno, or to '80s industrial-dance or '80s synthpop. The music of conquest must be cold and distant. Foreigners and vile, ranting Natives will hardly be impressed or cowed by *rap*. Armoured columns or helicopter gunships arriving to the sounds of early Front 242 or to Neon Judgment's "Chinese Black"-- that's the sound of empire arriving. Delerium, I think, should play at the governor-general's palace. And early Duran Duran is the music of an army of occupation: chill, elegant, convinced absolutely of its own stylishness. Gangsta rap finally lacks a sense of true self-assurance, and Natives can...identify...with rappers. Mere Natives can think they might one day *be* 50 Cent, but they know instinctively that they could never aspire to being Nick Rhodes-- let alone Bryan Ferry.

[There is, so I'm told, such a thing as *French* rap and Francophone rappers. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys trying to be gangstas... This is tiers-mondisme run amok. And...sad.]

There in the square before the governor-general's palace, the armoured cars must pass in review to "Union of the Snake" or "New Moon on Monday"-- music about style and grace and elegance far beyond what any vile, ranting jihadi Native could hope to obtain.

Synthpop is the music of empire.

There are diaries I'll miss, voices I'll miss. Samantha at Bloodyscars hasn't posted since my birthday last November. I worry about her and miss her voice. MissFemme hasn't posted since mid-December. Another voice missed. And as much and as often as I disagreed with Minderella ("Meen-der-eyya") about everything, I deeply miss her writing. And at Live Journal, Kristen at _Lanterns has shut her diary down, with all its lovely photos and thoughts.

Warmscars at Live Journal is gone, too... A lovely and sexy girl who is in law school out there somewhere. One of her earier entries, from the summer of the Year Four, about Costa Rica the summer before law school, is sexy and sad and fun all at once. Sunlight, surfing, sex on the beach, wordless romances-- lovely entry. I will miss her.

I mailed off a box of books to a friend in San Diego this morning-- books on German and Russian and Central Asian history culled from my shelves. It's a present to cheer her up-- someone whose post-law school experience has been even more disheartening and depressing than mine. Call it a box o'history to cheer Joely up, and (yes) a way to clear out my shelves and do something about the piles of books accumulating there on the floor. I mailed Joely a box o'books and took a second box to the local branch library as a donation. I can make space in my rooms and help give the small suburban branch library (in whose atrium I'm typing this) a serious collection of books on eastern Europe and Central Asia.

I have to ask DRL in Houston ("Howston") about her own rooms. She's as much a compulsive reader as I am. What does her apartment there in the Montrose look like? Are her shelves and floors piled with neurochemistry and neurology texts and all the lovely Japanese novels she likes? Does DRL have to constantly fight to make space for herself, her kittens, and her painting?

And when the Small Pika gets back from the Kanto, what will she do with the books and aneems I've assembled for her? Will she keep them in New Jersey under the watchful eye of little Alfie the Prophetic Dachshund or will she move them to her Philadelphia apartment...? I hate to think of batrachian Manxmen crawling ashore from the Delaware Bay and trying to take or destroy her aneem collection...

Maegan wrote last weekend that she was violently angry with her current Male Object. She told him something deeply personal, and it seems that he spread her secret to others in her circle at Trinity in Dublin. Maegan was incandescent with rage. She felt, she wrote, like "a circus freak" when others looked at her. She felt...betrayed. Whatever she told the useless Male Object was a dark and unrevealed secret from her past, something she's felt was shameful enough to hide for years. It's never good policy to reveal dark and painful secrets to anyone you're involved with. Never. And I do sympathize absolutely with her feeling of being betrayed and traduced and made to feel *less* in Others' eyes. But my own question was-- instantly --what could be so awful?

That's the many years of grad school in History surfacing. And, yes, the voyeur, too. Part of me always has to know the Story, has to probe for information and stories. I've always been an information junkie. And...Maegan is bright and literate and clever and strong-willed. Something that made someone with her strengths so ashamed-- what could it be?

Shameful things... For someone like me, that's easy enough: all my failures of age, looks, height, career, finances, lack of sexual value or skill, place of residence and birth, lack of any social status or future. But for a Latin-literate and vibrant and lovely girl of twenty-one, the range of shameful things almost has to lie in a very narrow set of possibilities. A teen suicide attempt, an eating disorder, promiscuity, a drug overdose, drug rehab, an abortion or two in high school or at university, an STD, a sexual assault, incest, a parental suicide-- all the dreary and familiar Lifetime Movie of the Week or Afternoon Talk Show list of possibilities. The range of possible shameful things really is limited to that narrow universe...

It wouldn't be a serious illness-- say, cancer or a tumor --and it wouldn't be anything like an academic expulsion. Whatever a lovely and intelligent girl of twenty-one is ashamed of, whatever makes her avoid Others' eyes-- it comes from a very, very narrow list. And that's quite sad in a way-- the narrowness of the list, the focus on sexual history and all the Elizabeth Wurtzel-esque psychological issues. Those are the things that can make a lovely young girl feel ashamed-- the Fallen Woman list of a century ago, not much updated. And none of the things on the list would make me feel like a girl was a freak, none of them would make me feel uneasy around a girl. It says something about me that the list items might intrigue me... And it says something about me that a girl who revealed a deep religious faith or a fondness for the loathsome Ayn Rand or the vile Ann Coulter *would* be a freak-- and a scary one --in my eyes.

And, yes: I did always want to have sex with Elizabeth Wurtzel.

DRL has had health issues, and she's had eating disorder problems in her past. I worry about her health and hope that she can overcome her illnesses and the pain in which she too often lives. The cachexical or anorectic parts of her past I link to her art, to her cartoon alter-ego Anya, and to her dream of a Heian mono-no-aware ethereality...and find alluring and intriguing. Bones and angles and ethereality are things I do find bewitching.

There are sites for posting unsent love letters, and sites where girls talk to lost and invisible lovers. I talk to...my books. I talk back to the characters in books. I lecture to my stufflings, yes, while I pace my rooms at night, telling them about the Habsburg Monarchy and Manchukuo and the way heavy frigates are designed. But I only talk to figures in books...or in others' letters or journal entries. I can talk only to figures defined in print. I have no ability to talk to those around me in the flesh.

There are electricians coming to my house this afternoon. There's something wrong with the electrical-- with the Leyden jars or the Van De Graaf generators or whatever makes the electrical fluid move through the aether. I suppose it'll get fixed. At least I don't have to pay for it. That's a serious goal in my life: not having to pay for it. One spends one's own money on books, on Chinese takee-outee, and on clothes. Anything else is...wrong. But I suppose I will have to be there and pretend to understand what they're telling me. After all-- I do need to have the electrical fluid moving through the aether if I'm to read and tape aneems for the Small Pika and have properly chilled shochu on a Saturday night.

If the electrical fluid does flow through the aether, I may listen to Miles Davis or Roxy Music or This Ascension. Or to "Musical Evenings With the Captain". But under no circumstances would I ever listen to rap. I'm a believer in empire-- and in lost empires. I'm a believer in elegance and irony and chill beauty. Rap can never be the music of empire-- or the music of seduction.