bilingual | zweisprachig

Do not worry. You are still in the right place. I just finally changed the layout because the old red-and-black one has really been bugging me for a while now. Everything is still here. Even all the widgety widgets in the sidebar, which is just a bit longer now due to there only being one, instead of two.

This new theme, Ocadia, is much easier on the eyes both colorwise and arrangementwise, innit.

Who is it that’s reading my blog via iPhone? Just yesterday I had a visitor via a feed reader that only works on Apple’s “mobile device,” as they call it. Here’s the refferring link:

http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/http://bilingual.wordpress.com/feed/

So who are you? Show yourself.

Somehow I’ve been on blog leave for almost seven months. Let’s not talk about it. I’ve just come to say that I’m back for the occasional dropping of my two cents about any old issue. Lots of things have happened in seven months and one or the other even stuck with me.

Coming up, ramblings about the ongoing writers strike in the U.S.

Just a brief quickie from me tonight, after another four weeks of hiatus. Talk about on and off…

A couple of days ago I joined Last.fm. This is a sort of social network that keeps track of all the music you listen to and sets up all kinds of statistics and then recommends new music to you according to your taste (unlike that bullshit on Amazon). But it’s not only another one of those spying tools that have been invading the internet. You can also listen to music; to all kinds of music, actually.

Every user has their own radio station which plays tracks that they listened to before. And you can tune in for free. The greater the variety and number of songs a user has listened to, the more songs will be on their station. Last.fm also lists gigs in your area, or gigs of your favorite artists, or whatever you want it to. Go check it out. It’s a lot of fun.

At the top of the right sidebar you can already see the music that I recently listened to, including links to my profile (with my charts) and to my radio station.

On another note, I’d like to say “Happy P-Day.” Thomas Pynchon turned 70 today and is as alive as ever. Or so we think. Hopefully he’ll live long enough to write at least one more of his big-ass tomes. He probably has about ten typewritten, proofread, and ready-to-be-published manuscripts—each at least 1,200 pages long—in the drawers of his desk that are just waiting to be published posthumously by some wacky editor. Unless his wife, Melanie Jackson, or son, Jackson, intervene.

Which makes me wonder why Pynchon had his first child only in his mid-fifties. He needed someone to handle his estate with the utmost discretion because he knew that the media, publishers, and scholars would go through his stuff before his dead body had cooled off. But he only realized that rather late. Pynchon is a slow learner himself.

On yet another note, let me express my discontent over the decision of the Swiss Federal Council to do away with price fixing on books with a simple: Fuck You! Pardon my French, but this says it all.

Dave Barry wrote a funny review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review about the trouble of writing letters nowadays. Read it and weep.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I have not posted since last week. So much for my I’m-gonna-blog-every-single-fucking-day promise. But there was nothing to talk about and I did not really feel like it, either. Plus, we are in the process of getting a new professor at our English Department and that takes up quite some time and effort; mostly time, though.

Some essays are due in the near future, some were due a couple of days ago. As soon as I have written them (also the ones that already were due still need to be written), you can read them here. This blog’s focus will shift a little more towards “serious writing.” You will not find as many “casual” posts as this one; another reason why I will not post as often anymore.

No time to talk about important stuff, as I am pretty busy doing important stuff myself, but enjoy the cartoon. It’s quite good today.

Daily Cartoon

This is one of the few times that I will talk about a sport other than tennis, but I just cannot resist due to some ties I have to Indy.

The Indianapolis Colts claimed the AFC Championship title just now and will join the Chicago Bears at the Super Bowl in Florida in two weeks. It is the Colts’ first time at the Bowl since 1970 (back then still as the Baltimore Colts).

They defeated the New England Patriots 38-34 at the RCA Dome in Indy. After the first half, the score was 21-6 in favor of the Patriots. The Colts always had to catch up, tied with the Patriots three or four times but never passed them, up until the very last minute when Joseph Addai scored a touchdown. With only twenty seconds left on the clock, Marlin Jackson intercepted a pass by Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady and it was a done deal.

This game was a real thriller and well worth staying up for. I just hope Peyton Manning will be in as good a shape against the Bears.

(New York Times coverage of the game)

Deserted brain today. "All apologies."

~~~~~

Daily Cartoon

… Martin Luther King, Jr. was born 78 years ago today. Imagine the world if he were still alive…

(The cartoon is still good, though.)