Sunday 24 March 2002

Speaking of elephants dancing, I went to the bookstore looking for John Crowley’s latest book, The Translator, but got distracted and didn’t find it. Rgh. Wait, we were speaking of elephants dancing. Well, there’s a book by a Filipina-American author, Tess Urize Holthe, called When Elephants Dance. Turned my head, that. About the magic realist tradition of the Philippines during the last days of the Japanese occupation when MacArthur kicked their scrawny asses off the islands. Magic realism? In the Philippines? Must be the Spanish thing. But some of the cover blurbs were just over-the-top, I mean, really! Something about her being the first something-or-other out of the Philippines [I’ll probably have to correct this sentence later]. Rosca? Hagedorn? Dalisay? But I would have picked it up if it weren’t for the PostgreSQL Developer’s Handbook that I had just picked up. 11:23:46 PM    comment []

Hm. Always wondered why Roger Zelazny copyrighted his later works as The Amber Corporation. I always thought it was a tax dodge. But if I read this essay properly, it grants The Amber Corporation a Disneyesque lease on the works involved. 11:00:12 PM    comment []

Hm. The xml subscription of lemonodor, a Lisp-oriented weblog, is giving me problems. Something about an s table? Rrgh. 12:15:58 AM    comment []

At Atlantique City today; walked sixty percent of the floor and stalls. Dead tired afterwards. I had picked up a Cookie Monster statue; bonus: it's a Cookie Monster stamp as well! There was a Steiff (knopf im ohr) exhibit as well, put together by individual Steiff antiquities dealers, celebrating the hundred-year anniversary of the Teddy Bear. Didn't see many nice pens, but caught an eyeful of Action Comics #1 ($125,000) and Detective Comics #27. 12:14:02 AM    comment []