I read in The Wall Street Journal about the melancholy of affluence, “Not in all the five millenia of man’s recorded history have so many been so affluent.”  Minds formed by scarcity are distorted.  The heart can’t take this sort of change.  Sometimes it just refuses to accept it.  (Humboldt’s Gift, p. 3)

I’m quite possibly the only person who has come to love Bellow’s prose in spite of personal misadventures with Augie March (it may have had much to do with the horrible typesetting of my copy) — but the angle at which he approaches it, just so slightly askance that you don’t notice anything is different until the light hits it like that and everything is altered, gets me every time.  And here, suddenly, there is no difference between the blessings of modernity and the curse of it: they’re one and the same, and neither would exist without the simultaneity of the other.  Something worth considering.

… by television?  And India is introducing electricity and late night TV to poor, rural villages — as birth control?

One such survey done in 2006 by an Italian sexologist reveals couples with televisions in their bedrooms had sex half as much as those without it.

Between the article as a whole, the word “sexologist” (doesn’t it just sound giggly?) and Pitino-gate schadenfreude I’m happily distracted from Cubs box scores at the moment — albeit in a way that makes me feel vaguely like a twelve year old, but what can you do, really?

P.S. While I’m on the subject of nothing in particular, this is miles away the best homemade whole wheat bread recipe we’ve tried, and we’ve tried a lot of them.

P.P.S. Also on the subject of nothing in particular but also on the subject of global capitalist triumphalism, Mr. Potato Head may be the one toy in the world that thoroughly engrosses a two year old without driving his parents to insanity. Nothing quite matches the sound of some nice wooden blocks, but ol’ Mr. P is one piece of cheap plastic crap that the good folks at Playskool clearly got right.

Some attentive readers out there may have noticed that, shortly after John went on vacation, I dropped off too — end of the academic year; papers to write and paperwork to fill out and a general need for clearheadedness.  I’ll be back sometime next week, but until then, I leave you with an admonition to go read Helen Rittelmeyer’s essay at Doublethink, “Toward a Bioethics of Love.”  (It happens to be the only thing of any intellectual substance not related to Greek tragedy that I’ve been able to read more than a paragraph of in at least two weeks — which I’m pretty sure is a compliment.)

2. Readers familiar with my penchant for verbally bludgeoning those whose opinions are deemed to be outside the reach of reason – though note that it’s not always like that! – may be unsurprised to learn that I agree with Caleb Stegall.

3. We just bought this cookbook at the supermarket, and plan to give it a spin tomorrow. Details to come.

4. No, we should not put a carbon tax on China.

5. And finally, give TAC your money!

Addendum: 6. Whoa.

I have a conflicted and complicated relationship with Yom Hashoah — it’s a lot easier just not to go into it here.  But that’s why I decided against writing something about Adam Kirsch’s poem, “Past the off-duty NYPD guard…” (it’s technically an untitled poem, I suppose) which I considered.  I find the poem rather true, and rather moving nevertheless.  Lately, though, I’ve been thinking a good deal about Leonard Cohen’s “All There Is To Know About Adolf Eichmann.” It isn’t much in the way of a poem, but it drives its point home.  The closing lines:

What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?

Madness?

And that’s the political lesson, I believe, of the Holocaust.