Back to work

The Monk has returned from his anniversary vacay with the Monkette2B -- a pleasant stay in Taos, New Mexico. We hiked, skied and bounced -- M2B hiked whilst The Monk attempted to remain upright on skis, and she bounced in the passenger seat whilst The Monk drove a snowmobile through an icy and extremely bumpy set of paths near Red River, NM. Nice trip, pretty area, and a good time.

But back to blog, so here are a couple of things to get us started while The Monk begins catching up at work:

First: an anti-eulogy for Susan Sontag. This one is pretty dang funny, so you get excerpt:

I ran into her once . . . in Sarajevo, during the siege in 1993, and she had arrived to stage a Bosnian version of Waiting for Godot. If memory serves – and possibly it doesn't, no doubt clouded by guilt that I failed to put the wretched woman over my knee and give her a sound spanking – she had each of Beckett's characters played by a Bosnian Muslim, a Bosnian Serb, and a Bosnian Croat.

By my personal reckoning, the performance lasted as long as the siege itself. It was mesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent. As inexcusable as the pretentious twaddle she had mounted on-stage were her manners off it. I have occasionally seen egregious examples of de haut en bas, but I have never seen anything as degrading and insufferable as her conduct towards the Sarajevans. And as far as I could judge, she never listened to any of them, but only uttered lordly pronouncements as she held court in the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, while outside scores daily died.

Second, this column from Ross Clark of the Daily Telegraph noting that the magnitude of the Sri Lankan/Thai/Indian tsunami tragedy is exponentially worse thanks to the abject poverty of those nations.

Third, Stanley Crouch notes the abuses glorified by hip-hop music, and one notable voice speaking out against them.

This should get you started, with more to come.