The Small Pika called last night from Williamsburg. She was sitting on a brownstone stoop in the Brooklyn night eating takee-outee Mongolian beef and lamenting the victory of the Yankees. The Small Pika is a Phillies girl, just as she's a Hanshin Tigers girl--- another team used to hard-luck and last-minute losses.

She's an Osaka girl--- always that. After all, Osaka is where she'll one day open Club Evil Badger as a jazz venue. And Osaka has the best takoyaki. No one doubts that.

I have a copy of Barbara Hodgson's "The Lives of Shadows" here on my desk. It's something I will recommend--- lovely and filled with beautiful found art. Do look for it. I think it's a lovely autumn read.

Anthony Bourdain sat the other night on "No Reservations" showing off a phrasebook he'd found in Osaka: phrases Hanshin Tigers fans can shout at their Tokyo Giants rivals. There are standard bits of abuse--- "jerk" or "pervert" ---in parallel English and katakana,and then the strangely Japanese sports-fan things: "my heart bleeds peanut butter for you" and "killing one more person won't make any difference". I'm not sure at all what to think of that. Though I thing Heather at wantedwanted would fit right in with her trademark bullhorn slogan: "Your resistance only makes my penis harder!"

I had to do a court appearance this morning, and I stopped by the little downtown library on the way back to my office and picked up a couple of books I'd ordered: Lewis Libby's "The Apprentice" and Joel Havfenstein's "Opium Season". I'd read "The Apprentice" before. It's not bad--- set in the wintertime hills of Niigata, back around 1904. Call it Japanese Gothic. It's one of those books where you can see the film in your mind's eye.

"Opium Season" is an Afghanistan memoir--- Havfenstein was there in 2004-05 with provincial reconstruction projects. I'm always enamoured of Afghanistan memoirs, wartime and pre-war both. Part of my whole Central Asia obsession. I'm always interested in how people like Joel Havfenstein got to central Afghanistan. In his case--- mostly luck. His family had been Lutheran missionaries in Nepal, so he had at least lived and worked in the region. He took an International Relations MA at Boston University and a semester as a teaching assistant in a class on Afghanistan and talked his way into an entry-level job at a contractor doing reconstruction work. Damn it, damn it, damn it--- why couldn't I get to Herat or even Balkh? Or Samarkand or Dushanbe or even Ulan Bataar?

Now... Let's try a question. Call it a variant of the Minimalist Living question I posed last month. Let's try it this way:

There on an ordinary autumn night the phone rings. The voice on the other end tells you to grab your passport and pack. One carry-on. And do it...now. Twenty minutes. That's all you have. There'll be a taxi there in twenty minutes. One carry-on. And you won't be back for...a while. Don't worry about the reason. Perfect job opportunity in the Far Away, perfect lover waiting in a distant aerodrome, even the hard men in black trenchcoats and guttural accents coming for you. Whatever--- don't worry about the why. You only have twenty minutes. What do you take? What can you walk away from? Listen to Al Stewart's "The Running Man" while you pack. Make a List, darlings. And as always--- Details Matter...

While you pack, I'll just say--- Barbara Hodgson's "The Sensualist" and "The Tattooed Map" and "Trading in Memories". Look them up. Read "Trading in Memories" in tandem with Nick Bantock's "Urgent 2nd Class".

My very tall and darkly elegant friend Elizabeth-Claire tells me that if she had twenty minutes to pack and be ready to go Far Foreign, she'd take---

In a perfect world:

-my laptop
-white men's A-shirt
-wool/silk blend black chalkstripe blazer and matching pencil skit
-black cashmere turtleneck sweater
-industrial fishnet stockings
-black lace push-up bra or black satin corset
-black patent leather concealed platform pumps

-a small bag of toiletries containing concealer, black eyeliner & mascara, red lipstick, travel-sized Aveeno moisturizer & a bottle of Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Deluxe

-my silk-lined jewelry pouch containing my favourite silver hoop earrings & jade ring

-If there was enough room, I'd also throw in my vintage mink stole & a pair of elbow length black leather gloves.

Interesting list--- all the more so I discovered from Elizabeth-Claire that "Industrial" is just the term used by my usual hosiery purveyor to indicate a medium gauge fishnet stocking. "Classic" fishnet is the small-holed, usual sort, and "fence net" is very thin, large holed style. I prefer the look and durability of the "industrial" net. Okay, then: something new learned every day.

I'm a reader of the Pharyngula blog, and I usually enjoy the posts and comments. But I had to do the *facepalm* thing when I watched a long thread that began as sardonic commentary on a Chicago "Ethical Humanist" group disinviting a Marxist speaker and then having the cops tase and subdue her photographer when she showed up to speak anyway get derailed and lost in the issue of whether it was "sexist" and evil to use the terms "drama queen" and "attention whore". The great moment came when a couple of regular commenters--- both gay men ---pointed out that "drama queen" and "attention whore" both began as terms among gay males for other gay males. That managed to muddy the waters and infuriate the moralistas even more. Someone wanted to try "drama llama" as a compromise term (it does rhyme) but couldn't make any headway. All I could do was laugh and shake my head and remember the lyrics to the Llama Song.

I do like Pharyngula. I really do. After all--- a blog that attacks religion and creationism and has cool posts about evolutionary biology gets major points from me. But sometimes...hmmm. The Pharyngula regulars get upset about theology and apologetics because the religious are just "making it up as they go along". I've never quite thought that making things up as you go was a Bad Thing. It's all the more fun when you and your audience both know you're making it up but decide to believe it and act on it anyway.

The Small Pika did post a video for Tindersticks doing "Rented Rooms" at her Facebook page. I do love the song. Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo recommended it to me--- it was on her Urban Desolation playlist last winter. It's on my list, too. It is a perfect alone-in-the-Manhattan-autumn-night song. One day I do want Miss Ginny to tell me Stories built up from her Urban Desolation playlist.

I am going to press any lovely readers to answer the Phone Call question above. Details Matter, after all.

Sushi tomorrow night, I think. I'll go out to Drunken Fish and sit at the bar and eat hamachi and octopus and drink Asahi and hope for Lists...