Sometimes when I’m digging around doing research I come across things that have absolutely nothing to do with my project, are generally unimportant, but nonetheless satisfy my interest in obscure anecdotes and juvenile humor.  So if you’ve ever wondered, “were the Red Hot Chili Peppers the first people to turn ‘California’ into a dirty word – i.e. californication?” you can rest assured that the answer is no.  

In 1924, Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959), Mexican writer, essayist, and guest star in my book project, wrote the following dirty poem about a friend who had recently gone to California:

Partió a California un día:

            Dizque iba a examinar.

            Según otra teoría

            se fue a cali-forni-car.” 

So there you go: Alfonso Reyes 1, Red Hot Chili Peppers 0.

Junot Díaz is not one of those stumbling, mumbling writers who you’ll listen to in an interview and think, “What the hell? How’d he get so damn eloquent in print?”  Díaz, author of the short story collection Drown and last year’s ass-kicking (this is a term Díaz would appreciate), Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao kills in interview format.  After hearing him over the radio, regaling a San Francisco crowd on growing up Dominican American in New Jersey, on the comics, fantasy and sci-fi he devoured as a kid, and on the apparently more “serious” literature he discovered later, I knew I had to check out this guy’s writing.  Oscar Wao, Díaz’s debut novel, doesn’t disappoint.  Like most good fiction, simply summarizing its plot only goes a short way toward capturing its particular importance or appeal – think about how unimpressive Don Quijote would seem if you reduced it to the mad knight’s travel schedule. 

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i was going to post this really dumb valentine’s day thing, but this somehow seemed more appropriate.

Radical Islamic Extremists Snowboard Into U.S. Embassy

“Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows.” – Twilight of the Idols, maxim #2

“Knowledge of the past is at all times desirable only insofar as it serves the future and the present.” – “On the Utility and Liability of History for Life

“When one finds it necessary to turn reason into a tyrant, as Socrates did, the danger cannot be slight that something else will play the tyrant.” – Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates” #10