I did watch "Genghis Blues"--- very much a film I want to recommend to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo. Blind San Francisco blues musician--- Cape Verde by heritage ---hears Tuvan throat singing on shortwave radio and teaches himself to do it. He ends up going to Tuva there in the late 1990s to participate in the annual throat singing competition in Kyzyl. The music and landscape are wonderful, and the film does let the blind singer explain how thrilling it all is--- and how maddening, since he can't see any of the world around him and since he feels utterly helpless away from familiar surroundings. It's one of the films I do want to talk about with Miss Ginny.

No bouillabaisse yet. But I found a small place downtown that does a lunch buffet that includes two huge cauldrons of gumbo and bisque. So I dashed over to the library at lunch and then sat at a tiny table at the buffet place and sampled their seafood gumbo and the crawfish bisque. Very decent. I never bothered about the rest of the food, just a couple of bowls from the cauldrons. Now--- a restaurant like that: is it table d'hote? Would it be the same as the Japanese Teishoku? Does anyone know?

I tried to read "Madame Bovary" a few days ago. I'd never actually read it--- just seen the Masterpiece Theatre version years ago. (There's a c. 1990 film version by Claude Chabrol, with Isabelle Huppert as Emma: something to Netflix.) Something about the novel was just...off. Not the main story idea, mind you. Provincial girl destroyed by trying to be a character in a romantic novel, trying to live like a character in a novel. That's nicely done, and something I seriously identify with. Emma Bovary and I were both ruined by books. I'm a 21st-century reader--- "Bovary" needed editing. Charles' schooldays and his daughter's life after both Emma and Charles are dead--- cut. Cut and tighten. Is it just that I'm part of a world that expects novels to be edited like films?

Films this weekend: "Time Traveler's Wife" and "Taking Woodstock". I'll go see both. Any time when I'm not at my office or not here facing my own isolation and loneliness is good time. Sitting in air-conditioned dark watching films--- as long as I'm able to escape being so utterly alone and valueless at my flat.

I have "A Good Woman" to watch tonight--- Scarlett Johansson and Helen Hunt doing an Oscar Wilde play moved to the Italian Riviera in the 1920s. It should be fun--- or at least worth opening up a bottle of pinot gris. I could use something witty tonight--- any dialogue with the hint of sparkle.

I really hate not having anyone to discuss films and "Mad Men" with any more.

Looking at Lonely Planet guides last night... I really must ask Miss Ginny: do I need a Lonely Planet Iran? Just in case I ever want to go see the Assassin castles or ride horses along the Caspian?

I've never been to Londres...or Mexique. I do need to see London. And I need to see both Marrakech and Tallinn. It's just that I'll never travel again. I only travel to meet lovely girls or travel alongside a lovely wicked girl. There's no point in traveling solo--- it only emphasises how alone I am in a crowd.

I used to think that the best opening line of any novel was of course Garcia Marquez's opening to "One Hundred Years of Solitude": "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." It's a magical line, and one I've recited to myself (and students) for years and years.

But I think that there may be a better...or at least more memorable...opening line. It's from a truly over-the-top and massively vile splatterpunk novel called "Pig", by Edward Lee: "Cindy stared for a long moment at the shot glass full of pig semen and then tossed it back neat." Ummm...ummm...ummm... Well, it is...memorable. Not something you'll forget. And as I pointed out to the lovely Heather at wantedwanted, knowing the opening line saves you having to read the full novel. After all--- what are the odds that the novel (or any novel) could live up to that opening line?

[I suppose I should tell Artemis at artemislives about the Lee line. It's certainly an opening that would've put "Jane Eyre" and "The Golden Bowl" in a different light. "Villette", too.]

Heather of course once wrote me to say that the best afternoon of her life was spent being driven through Toronto while she stood up through the sun roof of a car and shouted through a bullhorn, "Your resistance only makes my penis harder!" at unsuspecting strangers. Miss Heather would appreciate the Lee novel.

I've been trying to re-read "The Sun Also Rises". I love the setting and the scenes, but there's something far too depressing about the story right now. Question, of course--- there's the 1957 film version with Tyrone Power, but no re-make. Why is that? Why isn't there a new version with, say, Kristin Scott-Thomas as Lady Brett? I love the novel--- something given me when I was fifteen by my Honours English teacher, who had great hopes for me. She gave me a copy she'd had at university, and I think I was as intrigued by her marginalia as I was by the book itself. Anyway--- I love the novel. I just can't read it right now. I feel far too much like Jake Barnes, and a Jake who couldn't draw a glance from Lady Brett at that.

I do like my little Tare Panda Laptop. Toshi Tare Panda has been good to me this past year or so. Yet I do envy people who have MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I'd like to learn how to use a Mac. And the MacBook/Apple Lifestyle thing has become a marker for status and value. Once again, Lissy at emigree--- as with jumping rope and travel and languages and lovers and a future and boxing and living in a cool place ---has made me feel inferior. She's managed to make me feel inferior since...when? Two years? Certainly since early in the Year Eight. The other girl with a MacBook--- the girl who does opera and musicology: she makes me feel like that, too.

Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo usually updates on Saturdays this summer. I'll be hoping for a new entry from her this weekend. Last January I found her on line one late Saturday night and had a long G-Chat IM conversation with her. I did like that--- Miss Ginny is always worth talking to. I really hate IMs--- they always interrupt me when I'm trying to read entries or write things, and there's no nuance to IMs...and I type with one-and-a-half fingers, so I'm not quick enough for IMs. I really hate IMs, but I'll always exchange them with Miss Ginny.

Friday night here--- something like ten days since anyone has phoned me or exchanged texts. I made a list the other afternoon at my desk. Ten names--- lovely seductive wicked clever Voices on the late-night aether in the Year Nine. I won't hear from any of them again. Vanished, Missing, gone--- none of the names on that list will ever speak to me again. And of course I'll never see any of them in the flesh.

I think I hate it, too, that I'll never hear from Kelsey at clush again. Last summer she told me wonderful Stories and talked about books and music. Vanished altogether--- Dismissed me without explanation. One more Story I'll never get to read.

I don't know if Miss Ginny goes to my HighDesertSnow site at LastFM and keeps up with my tracklists. I hope she does. I do want her comments and thoughts on my music, just as I want her recommendations and her own tracklists.

The Lonely Planet guide to Iran. I want to read it, but it'll only make me depressed. Any travel guide is likely to do that.

I'll watch "A Good Woman" tonight. And maybe read some of M.F.K. Fisher's "Two Towns in Provence". Drink a lot of pinot gris. A lot of pinot gris. That's really all I'll be doing on weekend nights this late summer.