Just started reading Dear Mr. Kawabata by Rashid Al-Daif, a Lebanese author. The very interesting premise of the book, per the book-flap, led me to get it from the library and the few pages so far have been very good. You can read more about the premise at the review of the book here, which says:

Dear Mr Kawabata is an exercise in memory, in preserving and relating and passing on specific experiences and realisations and ideas -- and, of course, about the impossibility of doing so.

And here are a couple of excerpts from the first two pages.. that I loved!

For a moment I thought that I was seeing myself walking along the opposite pavement just a few meters away. The moment, however, seemed to become longer, increasing not just my surprise but also my feeling of emptiness. ...

and later...

I say 'met him' and 'the above-mentioned person' , Mr. Kawabata, rather than naming him explicitly, because among us, people do not mention the names of their enemies when speaking about them. Instead, we allude to them with an adjective, pronoun, circumlocution, gesture, or silence.

What a beautiful exposition of an existential disconnect that many of us suffer but do not necessarily recognize in our lives. I am looking forward to getting an hour or two to read more of this book. Reading couple pages at a time does such a wonderful book no justice.

http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/opinion/edchina.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
http://www.scallywag.org/diana/chapter-ix.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/opinion/edblum.php

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/news/qaeda.php?page=1

a new economic architecture
India and Brazil are refusing to open their markets further to goods from Western companies without a substantial reduction of subsidies provided to Western farmers.

New Delhi residents faced with hair-raising, and often deadly, daily commute

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has reported the disappearance of $22 million worth of equipment, computers and other items from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

haha...who cares for Sex on the beach, when you can enjoy the Joy of Sex :)

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers..as in..'Ssssh, its a library.'

Whoever said librarians can't have fun! ;)

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Other popular articles at New York Times today:

The bridge across the Penobscot Bay

Bachelorette parties at vineyards!

Small but mighty - The molecule called water

Just back from dinner at Fat Fish Blue in Cleveland..and enjoyed 40 minutes of great blues music from the Bryan Lee blues band. Heard a few good songs.... some from his latest album, Katrina was her name (review), which was released late last year and some (eg: The Things That I Used to Do by Guitar Slim) from an older album - Live, Saturday Night at the Old Absinthe House Bar, which is the name of the French quarters bar in New Orleans where Bryan Lee used to regularly play for many years. (Still does? Read somewhere it was closed down and made into a daiquiri bar?)

Wish I had stayed longer and heard them after the break too... but I had finished my meal and did not want to take another drink and sit through the 25 minute break and so decided to come back to the hotel room.

So...here now... wwoz.org or some blues station via shoutcast.com or last.fm or pandora.com or rhapsody.com beckons.

Its a strange world!

Police who chased a car for miles along a highway at speeds up to 100 mph said the driver was drunk, hardly a rarity in this resort town. But there was more: When they looked inside the flipped vehicle with guns drawn, they found an 11-year-old girl at the wheel. The girl, who was slightly injured in the crash, is now charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, speeding, reckless endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident.

The girl was charged for being under the influence as her blood alcohol level was higher than .02, the legal limit for minors

WTF... why is there even a legal limit for minors.

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More proof that it is a f-ed up world!

Video Appears To Show 2-Year-Old Girl On Ecstasy

Much has been written and debated about Mona Lisa's smile ... seems the confusion arises due to a painting technique called Sfumato which Leonardo honed and excelled at..

The debate (over the smile) is due to the use of sfumato around her mouth, making it a mystery as to whether the shadows are a result of a smile or if the smile is a result of the shadows. The painting is painted using tiny dots in several layers, around the eyes and mouth as many as 40 layers.

George Saunders, about whom I blogged earlier, wrote a great editorial in the Guernica magazine in October 2006 about the process of writing..

..talent is only the beginning - the essential thing is having a talent for having talent. You have certain abilities, certain defects as a writer: how do you accommodate these? There are certain things you can't seem to do - what form can you invent to circumvent these things? You have certain fears, obsessions, neuroses, patterns of thought and speech - can you let these into the work, accepting them as part of the wonder that is you, and accepting the wonder that is you as part of the greater wonder that is the world? Or do you lunge back to the shore, taking comfort in the conventional?

The young writer is called upon, in other words, through work and craft and persistence, to take the raw talent he or she has, and force it into some deep, dark corners...to try to wrest from "mere" talent a kind of iconic originality...to confront the parts of himself or herself that, in the early days of a career, one thinks can be ignored, or overcome, or hidden under a mattress somewhere.

But no. Turns out, everything must be used. So it's interesting to watch this process unfold. ...

Read more at the original. Its a pretty good editorial and points to some other good upcoming writers.

Just finished reading an interesting novella - The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders

A quick read but absolutely brilliant. Amazing imagination, sardonic wit, and a fine commentary on the way people in power manipulate information and people to keep the status quo.

Saunder's novels have been said to be a great satirical representation of "America’s empire-building and pop-culture obsessions" which he sees as both "comic and tragic." Here's Saunders on reading Slaughterhouse Five by another guru of the tragic-comic novel genre, the recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut .

Also read some interesting interviews with the author: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Just heard a great song, I still think about you by Dr. John (from the album, Afterglow) on Mel Hill's Jazz show on BBC Radio. You can also listen to it on Rhapsody music.

Also, this week's show starts with "six and a quarter minutes of red-hot excellence" with a "wonderfully vigorous version" of Struttin' With Some Barbecue by Tom Saunders' Wild Bill Davison Band, which can be found on this album and heard online at Rhapsody music.(The original version of this song was written in the 1920s by Louis Armstrong and his then wife, Lil Hardin. You can hear various other versions of the song, including that by Armstrong, here.)

Right after that I heard a very delicate and wonderful piano piece - Echoes Of Spring by Johnny Varro, followed by a good piece, Four On Six by Wes Montgomery & Wynton Kelly Trio and then Dr. John's beautiful bluesy song. That's all the time I have for jazz this morning... but that will do. Beautiful...what a start to the day!

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For now, here are the lyrics to Dr. John's song - as best as I could understand and transcribe them as I listened to them.

Sometimes when I'm with her
I feel lonely...

She love me still
I feel good

Although I'm bad
to that woman

Although I'm bad (?)
to that woman

Can I help if I still think about you

There are times when we get together
little things she does
reminds me of you

.....

Can I help it if I still think about you

If she found out
it would only hurt her
she would turn and wanna go

We'll just let this remain our secret
Its something she must never know

I try but still
I can't stop crying
She never know what makes me so blue

Although I'm bad (?)
to that woman

Can I help it if I still think about you

Can I help it if I still think about you

1. Why Dutch women don't get depressed

2. Family dynamics, not biology, behind higher IQ

3. New Zealand scientists breed cows that produce low-fat milk

4. Scientists find drug to banish bad memories

5. Jets of matter clocked at near-light speed

6. Scientists have taken a first step toward making synthetic life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another, transforming the second microbe into a copy of the first

7. 13th century text hides words of Archimedes -The pages of a medieval prayer text also contain words of ancient Greek engineer Archimedes. It takes high-tech imaging to read between the lines.

8. Anthropology unites humankind rather than dividing it Only by understanding our cultural differences can we hope to get along on this planet, says Luke Freeman

9. Crater could solve 1908 Tunguska Meteor Mystery

10. Archaeologists let looters do some of the work

11. Researchers find what may be the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere.

12. The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged two of the largest known asteroids, revealing craters and other features that will soon be the targets of close-up observations by NASA's Dawn spacecraft.