the mice

i have become involved with a strange mission of hunting down a ngwe translator for an asylum seeker. i have to make a round of phone calls to the village in 1am, and, after explaining why they haven't heard from me in eight months, ask about their cousins and aunties who may live in ale' belek, though they are not properly familiar with the country. augusta! toronto! silver springs! america! where is my cocoa sprayer?

if that fails there is the matter of my old colleague and his newborn baby and his wife. i would only like to talk to this refugee. who is trying to kill him?

walking home from work i saw a compact suv slow up astride me and the bearded shaded man grinned and said "hop in" (as the mexicans in the low rider say to the asian girl, "japonesa!") and he told me that there is this one academy in taiwan, very costly and dear, but those who emerge from it can speak mandarin as did the classic poets of 200 years ago, the lost generation. he has to translate some poetry, and enjoys the license whereby you, in translating the word for "deep green," which is two repeated syllables, should place alliteration somewhere in that line.

Sketches By Boz

Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater;and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour.

-Charles Dickens

LAISSEZ PASSER

at this time of year there is cold and rain comes but it does not come so strongly as it would in the rainy season proper. following this month there is a period of dry climate and this is also when the fronds are strong, green and waxy. in this dry month we go out in small groups, to keep each other company more than any other reason, but also so that if a bit of game is seen, someone can chase it while the rest of the group is busy cutting fronds. in those cases where we catch something, the person who caught the beast will burn the fur, then go to the stream to clean it, and finally return to the cutting site to roast the meat, and everyone will get a piece. the true raining season then comes the following month, and everybody has time to prepare the new thatches and change them with the previous year's. the old style of thatching was said to last two and sometimes three years, but the palm they used in those times is scarce to be seen, since there is a rot that infects its saplings.

on one such night, between the small raining month and the dry month, i was staying indoors to watch a film. my old colleague from medical school, the now doctor mengano, called me to tell me that his mother had arrived with a bundle for him, and that i should come to share some prepared food with him, because i have always been generous to share my own good fortune and it is fair to reciprocate. i put on my deerskin greatcoat to protect myself against the cold, and stepped out. as i began to bind the door, i heard some rumblings. though they were on the other side of the hill, there would be a storm on our side, because the wind, which just then began to howl, bore that fresh, lively essence that precedes rain.

i returned inside to wait for the rain to pass, or at least for it to weaken. i switched the film back on and quickly refreshed myself as to what was happening and how the morals of each character were. the rain became stronger, and i wondered if it would pass before dr. mengano put away the food or gave it to some other guest. i do not think responsibly when i am anticipating a meal. had i been of a more vigilant mind, i would have turned off my video player and removed the cord from the wall, fearing lightning.

of course, i was punished for this inattention, and lightning did come. i gasped and everything flashed brilliantly for a second, all of my field of vision. then i was in the full darkness, and my heart was beating very fast, as if i were being chased by a murderer. i do not know if i had been shocked by it, but if i had, it was not so grave, since i quickly regained my composure. the lightning had burned the transformer in my video player, so i would have to go to the city to get it replaced. to make matters worse, a section of my roof had collapsed and water was coming in.

when your luck sours so greatly, you do not even have the option of cursing or complaining. your only choice is to move like a robot, working in a way to best minimize the damage, saving all your bitter thoughts for later. i put on my raincoat and went out into the storm with my cutlass. i cut a few fronds from the thicket behind my house and brought them inside. i hung the raincoat to dry in one of the unaffected parts of the house, and began to weave thatches as i sipped the bitterness of the hot coffee to warm myself again.

while i was working, the rain stopped. by now, the reader should be familiar with my weakness, and should not be surprised that i decided to stop working--although all that remained was for me to tie the woven thatches in their places--and satisfy my stomach. i trekked to dr. mengano's house to claim my portion of cooked food. when i reached there, he was lying in bed with a woman and would thus not have time for chatter. he divided out a portion and gave it to me in the flask that he had borrowed from me some days before. i took the flask home.

on returning home, i began to understand that tying the thatches in place would not be as simple is i had imagined, since it would require hanging the kerosene lamp from a nearby part of the roof and working by stretching my arms over my head, training my eyes on the work sullied over by flickering shadows. i was disheartened and i did not even have an appetite. i went to the side of the house where i thought the roof to be strongest, lest it begin to rain again, and slept.

the food, which i ate in the morning, when it was bright and easy to work, was chiles rellenos. here is how they are made:

prepare a pot of picadillo in the style that you like.
take some chiles new mexico and remove the bitterness from their skin in either of two ways:
1) immerse them in boiling water for a minute
2) singe the skins with a gas flame

cut a slit up and down each pepper, and carefully remove the seeds and veins. stuff them with picadillo and then bake them until the meat juices have softened the peppers through and through.

meanwhile, prepare a salsa that can be poured over the peppers. dr. mengano's mother had prepared a thin tomato sauce spiced with chile arbol that had some thinly sliced young potatoes in it.

quercus

cork, quercetin, are cognate.

i lost the bottom button of my jacket. i mean it fell off. i picked up. i could still sew it back on.

the next beer i make will not have hops, but yarrow and sweet gale as preservatives and flavoring agents.

from 7-9 at work i command a large room with four small nooks, doored in with one-way film. i sit, looking out to the entry, on the left side at the back, as chiefs are supposed to sit in bangwa areas.

here is my favorite passage from los adioses:

"... que la existencia del pasado depende de la cantidad del presente que le demos, y que es possible darle poca, darle ninguna."

sauces, as we know them today, are fairly modern inventions.

did you not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese?

two important points on English language.

1) the question why not? can have two meanings, which can only be inferred from context. intentionally confusing the meaning is an appropriate comic device.

a) "why will it not have been so?"
b) "for what reason should it not be so?"

example of the intentional mis-sense in comedy:

why throw out perfectly good whey, when we can make ricotta?
because we're lazy

2) the dirty britons call cookies and snack crackers biscuits. as i understood, a biscuit is the soft, plump, buttery thing that you dip in sausage gravy at breakfast. the bri'ish use of the word is closer to the original meaning:

(pain) bes quit (Anglo French, "twice-cooked (bread)"

sagesse aleatoire

we went to frank?'s house on the astringent wind-swept evening to drink whisky and get out of the house. a woman was giggling behind the door and duylinh opened it. i stayed behind because it was more interesting that the giggler remain anonymous, if just for a few seconds.

"oh, it's you..."
"we're drinking mimosas and watching the brak show"

the four of us debated politics and the perception of social vice.

there are two types of laziness.

latent laziness, a type of laziness that is only comprehended in retrospect, when you understand that the last time you looked at the clock was two hours ago, and you can't recall what you may have done since the last time you looked. you pronounce laziness.
applied laziness, a prae hoc laziness, where you begin to savor and enjoy your idleness before it starts or shortly after it has begun, the type of laziness that is encouraged by drinking cheap champagne mixed with ersatz orange juice on an astringent wind-swept evening in january.

an excerpt from a typical haruki murakami novel goes like this:

"it was three o'clock, and no sign of the reptile. i was feeling hungry, so i whipped up a potato salad and washed it down with a can of beer."

this has sown in my mind the idea that the ideal lunch is a bit of cold potato salad with a can of beer. i am going to fulfill that fantasy right now, having made a potato salad last night and refrigerated it.

come fa

hog's head in the sink.

nobody can use the sink. the hog's head has to be there for six hours, if i am to follow the directions.

the best book i have ever read about food or cooking:

McGee, H. On Food and Cooking.

the author condenses scientific research about food and cooking methods. he also seems to be a philologist, citing medieval and roman era texts of various languages. he attributes this statement about beans to Saint Jerome:

in partibus genitalibus titillationes producunt

i am also tempted to make something called "small beer," which was a common man's ale, very weak in alcohol, made with a second mashing of grain. the idea was that it was a safe alternative to drinking water at breakfast, lunch and dinner. so that it costs me nothing more than for the energy and water, i'll spice it with ginger instead of hops and use yeast from the bottom of the fermenter. nothing to lose.

bibeat

there are two features that make reading novels by Onetti a sort of decadent pleasure.

1. the narrator is a bit too honest, not allowing him to make even the simplest of statements with certainty, yet it seems clear that he is capable of lying or misrepresenting when the truth would be too complicated or speculative.
2. the aura of self-insulating depression.

here are two phrases from Los Adioses que me caen bien:

. . . estaba solo, y cuando la soledad nos importa somos capaces de cumplir todas las vilezas adecuadas para asegurarnos compañía, oídos y ojos que nos atiendan. Hablo de ellos, los demás, no de mí

. . . a ratos mascaba hablando; se me ocurrió que el odio del enfermero, apenas tibio, empecinado, no podía haber nacido de la negativa del otro a las inyecciones propuestas por Gunz; que había en su origen una incomprensible humillación, una ofensa secreta (instead of "no me gustaba como mascaba hablando")

the result of a football bet against my brother, in which i was victorious

a modest apology.

11:07am Today

Hello,
Unfortunately, there are many people here that I have known or cared about who are not on facebook. If you read this and know that we have a mutual friend who is not on facebook, please pass it along. But I would like to give my most heartfelt and profound apologies to all of my friends, family, and coworkers who have been involved with my life today or in the past. At some point in our respective relationships, I might have given you advice, which I ensure was given with only the sincere hope that it would be of help to you. I wanted to help you make the best of your lives but I realize now that my "help" almost certainly had the opposite effect. Clearly, there is something flawed with my decision-making process. Clearly, the way my brain operates is wrong. I would not speculate that I have a disease in my head -- no, that would only be a crass attempt on my part to seek pity and sympathy and to shirk responsibility for my actions. But after cheering the Dallas Cowboys, only to see them lose in such a spectacular and ignominous manner, it is apparent that I make decisions in an ill-conceived manner. It was the Green Bay Packers who I should have cheered the whole time.
I have several pieces of Dallas Cowboys paraphenelia: caps, posters on the wall, various trading cards and commemorative t-shirts and mugs. I should dig a hole and bury them, then mark the place, as a final resting place for those things which show my character flaws. But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not hallow this ground. The world will little note, nor long remember, that I turned my back on the Dallas Cowboys, but merely that I once supported them. So I can not claim redemption or hope for an improvement in my reputation, but merely to live out my life humbly until I am mercifully forgotten. Thank you, and long live the Green Bay Packers.

the vocabulary police

the word "pablum" has appeared twice in the New York Times opinion page in as many days. i think i am entitled to an explanation. until then, i can imagine my own. the two columnists with the most expansive vocabulary, or the most inclination to make use of it, Dowd and Rich, drop a word that is attractive enough to be later copied.

in other media vocabulary news, John Stewart made a joke that almost nobody got last week, unless they looked the word up, explaining why he had a unibrow. the word was the key to my last cognate challenge.

fair question

at times you have an idea or course of action that came about quite naturally and you go to pursue it, but you are soon convinced that this is a joke, because it does not fit into the set of statistically likely events, and having to explain how things come about makes it all the more laughable.

i called the video store, and as the phone was ringing, i felt as though i had a perfectly reasonable question, but soon i was having great trouble avoiding laughing and frank was laughing loudly, making the clerk answering the phone think that this was all some sort of sick joke that she did not understand, under whose design she would no longer play the fool, saying curtly "no, i am not seeing it." and we hang up on each other, and now not even i understand why i want to see how it ends.

stop 59'in, stranger

i was lying in the back seat of a car, but i was viewing it from outside. the car's bumper was touching the rear bumper of another car. a blue car and a white car. there were young children playing in the car. a police car was parked on the other side of the road. adults came over and i thought it was because the children had crashed the cars. instead, the issue was that they were playing with the 8-track player and the tape got a bit unraveled and didn't play properly. it was a single by president george w bush. it had a picture of a cactus on the front, and he was singing in a voice like johnny cash's:

i know i ain't . . . danger
stop fifty-nine'in', stranger
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

i wish i knew how to write in musical notation, because in the third line i only know the melody.

charades

the french verbs écumer and écrémer ("skim" and "cream") refer to the exact same action, but with differing intentions:

remove the top layer of a liquid

a) so as to discard, conserving what remains
b) so as to conserve, discarding what remains

I made the paper!

For the first time ever, I am the subject of a New York Times editorial.

any publicity is good publicity! i have to say that because i am criticized, though not by name:

However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

the writer was my boss for nearly two years. he has a good point. i think he has had this idea in his head for a long time. the first time he spoke to us he chronicled all the misdeeds of irresponsible volunteers, things he could not fathom. then we got a newsletter from him with some information about more recent villainous acts. this was about ten days after we had reached the country. a constant source of humor was to imagine ways that we could reinforce his ideas and laugh about what he would then write in the next newsletter. this led to a game of generating apocryphal rumors about the infamous deeds of me and other volunteers, seeing if they would resurface somewhere else. that is an immature thing to do.

my first private conversation with him was about "how many beers did i drink at lunch, i mean honestly you really must have been throwing them back". no, the first time i spoke to him privately was when he came up to me and showed me two expensive looking glass ampoules, saying "this is for an anthrax attack. terrorists. this thing is real." the fondest memory i have of him was when he drove me to the ambassador's house to watch the super bowl, and he brought his own football and he threw me a pass. we shared other moments together, in none of the which did our estimation of the other increase, by faith.

as for the old people in peace corps, i think the problem with them is that they do not learn a new language easily. the advantage is that they are more likely to be mentally stable. younger volunteers sometimes suffer mental breakdowns. as for Cameroon in particular, there was a great perceived disorder in the main office when i was there, and no one seemed to be interested in what i was doing. it was never clear what i was supposed to do, but i think i did ok.

kde

we acquired some frozen tilapia cheaply. i thawed them and smeared them with kosher salt, garlic and cayenne pepper, then put them on burglar mesh grill that had been brushed with soybean oil. people are patient sitting around the grill for five minutes, then the fish gets flipped and we pick off all the cooked flesh with fondue forks and chopsticks. flip again and repeat. then if you are into that sort of thing there are the eyes and the spine which can be re roasted.

i went to the neighborhood park to practice jump shots. the last pick up game i played was at the court near trudy's, with guys who came because they couldn't afford to drink or whose kidneys were starting to hurt from holiday drinking, and wanted to do something healthier. i could get open shots, but missed all of them except for a layup or two. in the neighborhood park it was parents with their children. i played HORSE with a boy who looked about 12 years old and we split a pair of games.

cleaning up the day after the party, i found twelve bottles of vodka, gin, vermouth, scotch, homemade polish spirit and wine, most more than half full. but the alcohol doesn't please me anymore. the best feature of the party was that i put the laptops away and only had an ipod 2 GB connected to the stereo. this prevented guests from playing their favorite music videos on youtube, thereby reminding other guests of an even funnier video that would be played next.

utter

Tum porro puer, ut saevis projectus ab undis
Nativa, nudus humi jacet, infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit;
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequum est
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
At variae crescunt pecudes, armenta, feraeque,
Nec crepitacula eis opus est, nec cuiquam adhibenda est
Almae nutricis blanda atque infracta loquella;
Nec varias quaerunt vestes pro tempore coeli;
Denique non armis opus est, non moenibus altis,
Queis sua tutentur, quando omnibus omnia large
Tellus ipsa parit, naturaque deadala rerum.

-Lucretius

he said that the dog had bitten through the hen's hindquarters and its body was face down and slicked with yolk, as was the dog's snout, and the dog was chained and beaten with the hen's dead body. so that it won't do it again. i suggested a peacock as a galliform object of fear for timid dogs.

cole slaw: soak the shredded cabbage in ice water. use vinaigrette instead of mayonnaise. add chopped pickles.

koutiom

the new style of electronic music from angola is called kuduro.

in 1588, Michel de Montaigne, who Wikipedia says was the first writer to successfully integrate personal feelings and anecdotes into writings on science and politics, noted, all to wisely, this about the New World:

Notre monde vient d'en trouver un autre, non moins grand, plain et membru que luy, toutesfois si nouveau et si enfant qu?on luy apprend encore son a b c [?] Bien crains-je que nous aurons bien fort hasté sa déclinaison et sa ruyne par notre contagion et que nous luy aurons vendu bien cher nos opinions et nos arts.

roughly,

Our own world has just found another, not any less grand, vast or peopled than it, so new and young in every way that it has yet to learn it's ABC's . . . I do fear that we may have greatly hastened its demise and its ruin with our contagion and that we may have sold to it our opinions and our arts very dearly.

i left new years parties early because i hadn't eaten supper and they only had chips and dip. for this party i got 17 pounds of pork shoulder and some cabbage for cole slaw. duylinh will make the chips and dip. tomorrow i have to make the final edit of that one last essay for college.

if i was to choose between japanese salaryman and japanese housewife in the times of salarymen, i would choose to be a housewife. they say the former aren't allowed to sleep. in those good old times, that is. the new generation does not consider it their duty to drink with the boss until 2am. according to this short film i watched today, the housewife doesn't have to wear anything other than an apron.

if Montaigne didn't know how to spell, look at this guy, Guillaume de Montoche, from 1535.

. . . Tost après l'entrée de Sa Majesté en la cité de Thunes, y vint mesmement l'infanterie espagnole et aulcuns aultres souldatz, qui commencearent incontinant à rompre et abbatre portes et fenestres, entrant ès maisons et tuoient les Mores qui leur resistoient par dedans, pour après piller et saccager tout ce qui estoit . . .

this DVD from the bargain bin, two films for $5 on one disc. i wanted to get one called Gente Decente, and it had a woman whose body was only covered by leather straps against which it strained. Wal-Mart. the back-described plot did not have anything to do with the picture on the cover.

hortatory

"the rent is low, so you don't have to work much." that is an interesting concept.

the word hortatory, usually used to describe anarchist graffiti.

to appear more cheerful, i suggested that we eat a meal that resembles what television characters were talking about in bad translation ("toast meat") and resembles a meal i had almost five years ago. an electric griddle is good then, but it would perhaps be easier to use the korean-style metal chopsticks to remove meat from it. a bit of thin-sliced sirloin, marinated, and you drop it on the sesame oil brushed (carstuck girls, wellchosen words) griddle, then remove it 45 seconds later. put it in a leaf of lettuce with chunks of coarse chopped garlic and chili sauce. cucumber and spinach salads on the side.

domestic arguments, you can take a break by tallying the logical fallacies:

ad baculum
ad hominem
tu quoque
red herring
begging the question
ad ignorantiam
ad nauseam
poisoning the well

i wrote a letter complaining to the grocery store about an unfulfilled sale on leeks. with any luck their PR representative will send me, by first-class male, a complimentary fucking leek.

chinese peasants and books

From Livres en feu:

". . . and in 1862, a considerable amount of irreplaceable works were sold by the pound to two workshops in Fenghua and Tang'ao, which changed them into ordinary paper for wrapping up meat at the market."

"During the winter of 1899, in Anyang, China, the earth is gutted open with a great roar . . . young and old fascinate over two excavations brought to light by a mudslide, exposing pale objects where one can make out engraved pictographs. The peasants sell them to apothecaries which reduce them to powders for longevity and sexual rejuvenation. Everyone is content."