Maintaining

Waiting for the plumber and reading Immanuel Wallerstein's "Historical Capitalism" while listening to Teenage Kicks on KFAI.  Beans in the pressure cooker are spitting at me.  Sorry, sorry!  It does seem meaner than the crockpot somehow. But who wants to wait.

I took out a bunch of books from thrre social/economic theory shelf and now I'm having to actually read them...  Interesting, but slow going.  Watched "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" last night, which was ok but made me want to read the book.  It was paced weird and slightly obscure, just enough to make me sleepy.  I think I stayed awake the whole time...

Le Carre's "Call for the Dead" (IIRC) made for a good audio book.  The reader had a good pace and tone and it was a pleasantly old school style of prose. 

"American Psycho" did not entertain as much as "Bright Lights, Big City."  I gave up after leafing through 20 pages of descriptions of 80s clothes, decor, and grooming habits and awful awful people, before anything happened.  Took notes on this, eh, as I tend towards these openers and have to CUT them out.  As he could have.  But then, it was probably entertaining in the 80s or shortly after when it all signified more...  But I remember being bored then too. 

The movie by Mary Harron and Guin Turner is more sly and clever, and moves along more... All that detail slides by more easily on film.

Anyway, I've earned this holidat weekend by upping my production numbers this past month.  The methods and checklists I've spent so much time developing seem to be slowly paying off.  I can't stop my perfectionism, but I think I can reign it in without feeling too much like I'm phoning it in...  It's hard when you get a lot if praise for thoroughness and complexity...

Meanwhile my favorite state workers are being told they don't deserve 2% raises after the long furloughs without pay, serious attrition amidst hiring freeze shrinkage, and multiplying duties.  Yay, business oriented economic analysis- those CEOs getting all those bonusus and raises just don't figure in...  Run it into the ground like all those Savings and Loans and banks and brokerages and businesses and farms that are the lifeblood of our healthy GDP, willya?  Sure, you betcha.

The photo is our old, one of the worst in the US, skid row (Washington Avenue) transformed into downtown residential playland.  It still surprises me every time I go there.  The dark empty lots are gone.  There's a before picture on a wall of a building I walked by before taking this photo...  Then the Guthrie decided to move and, bang, renewal.  (The people were displaced decades ago, so no real fight, AFAIK.)

Hmm.  Nothing much more to babble about.  Blondie is hanging on the telephone after she hollered for that dude to call her.  Teenage kicks rocks harder than most of the misplaced noatalgia fests aimed at my demographic, but only because it's light, lazy, and as Brit-oriented as punks and alt rockers were then.  Not all REO and Night Ranger...