Dujour means seatbelts!

[geekchick]

Today is Sweetmorn, day 38 in the season of Discord, 3268.

I officially can't be trusted anymore, as I'm now indubitably "over 30".


More birthdays should be like this (except for the nearly 50-degree temperature drop over the course of 3 days and the rain). Woke up to another ecard, a sweet note from wolfy, and a copy of the first Los Lobos album from Steve which came in the mail yesterday, then a large part of the afternoon was spent at G Street Fabrics with anotheranon ogling pretty silks and velvets. I must teach myself to use a sewing machine one of these days; I think once we're both employed again and the budget isn't so tight, I might treat myself to a low-end sewing machine and some lessons. I was feeling like I sucked because I was half an hour late for the appointed meeting-up time (pretty late even for me, who is habitually late), thanks to construction (who does road work on Sundays in the rain?), forgetting that I wasn't just low on gas, I was almost *out* of gas, and then having an accident occur in the middle of Seven Corners right before I got there. (Seven Corners is pretty much exactly that; it's a truly horrendous, confusing intersection of several major roads that looks like this.) Luckily (for some value of such), traffic was equally bad everywhere else it seems, so I didn't suck as much as I thought I did. A quick trip into B&N after the fabric store yielded a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel, about which I have heard many positive reviews. Hey, someone on Amazon calls it "Liberal Revisionist Lunacy", so it must be good. ;)

Last night was a nice, low-key evening. Had about eight people over for dinner and the decadent white chocolate raspberry cheesecake Chris bought me at The Cheesecake Factory. He also, elsewhere of course, obtained the stuffed rabbit from Holy Grail; we were trying to decide if we had enough time to rig it up on some wire to come flying at our guests when they came in the door last night. Luckily for said guests, we decided we didn't quite have enough time. ;) We ended up watching "George Lucas in Love" and "Josie and the Pussycats". I resisted watching that movie for a long, long time because I was sure it was going to be stupid and not funny. Instead it turned out to be stupid and very, very funny. Upon reflection, if it had both Parker Posey and Alan Cumming, how bad could it have been? (Don't answer that.) Dujour is the new Backstreet Boys! Anyway, had a very nice, relaxing evening with some of my favorite people in the world; the only thing missing was that all of my favorite people weren't there.

And on a final note: Duh? =)

Take the What High School Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.

Comments

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

GGS was, IMHO, largely a rehash of William McNeill's PLAGUES AND PEOPLES. The whole brouhaha over GGS is reminding me of the brouhaha over Goldhagen's HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, which was in large part a rehash of Browning's IDEOLOGY OF DEATH. Younger, hipper scholar takes someone else's ideas, jazzes 'em up a little, and then gets a lot of media attention.

Still was interesting, but not as interesting as Israel Finkelstein's THE BIBLE UNEARTHED, in which, among other things, the evidence for the existence of King David was severly challenged. Salon had a great article on it entitled King David was a nebbish (www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/).

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I forgot how Livejournal works. www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/ for the link.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I haven't read Ideologies of Death, only Ordinary Men, in which he offers a radically different interpretation of reserve police battalion 101 from what Goldhagen presents in HWE. If Goldhagen has stolen all his ideas from Browning, Browning nevertheless wasn't using them himself in Ordinary Men.

I was intrigued enough by this comment to look at your live journal, which I found quite interesting, especially where you talk about setting up a new gaming campaign. I like to chat with you about this. Please get in touch.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

*grins sheepishly* I was actually thinking of ORDINARY MEN. Mea Culpa.

I thought Goldhagen was tremendously derivative of ORDINARY MEN, although, as you note, he did put a far different interpetations on things.

I'll happily get in touch when I'm back in Boston. Doesn't look like that will happen until October, though.

(I had a lot more public on my page than I thought! Well, the DND entry is still there, but the rest of it is gone.)

Re:

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Goldhagen's research certainly overlapped Browning's significantly, and may well have been derived from Browning's, but IMHO it's the spin they put on it that matters, and that is, indeed, quite different. Goldhagen strikes me as a very obnoxious and arrogant man (and one of my professors reported receiving a similar impression in person), but I think he is good historian, even though I know several people who disagree.

I look forward to hearing from you.