armadillo, very large

There's a huge bunny in the yard.

A week til I turn in the draft PhD, 8 weeks til final. Should we ever have another lockdown pandemic, I shall find a better solution for my boredom than a PhD.

In some hazy state this morning, I accidentally made a pot of caffeinated coffee and not decaf, and did not notice until I had ingested the entire thing. <meep>

I asked the AI what language I should learn next (given which ones I have studied), and it told me I should learn Basque because it would "change how I think".

I am unsure which is more dangerous: watching youtube pottery videos or watching McQueen runway shows. It is probably for the best I cannot stream all the NDT I could want.

Orange cover of Max Porter's The Death of Francis Bacon published by ff.

Porter creates with words 7 paintings by a Bacon on his death bed in Spain. They feel plausibly Bacon: his life, oddities, bad behavior. They feel like rage and frustration and creative force and death. I am not sure what it would be like to read this with no Bacon of one’s own in one's head. Wow.

After having only an academia-related TBR list for several years, my binge-buying of the last three weeks has resulted in this glory. I've read the Porter/Bacon, Dazai, and Yi Seoyoung. Part way through Lithium.

Fitzcarraldo binge-purchasing in London.

One of the outcomes of doing a PhD is a newfound love for the novella.

And the eight I bought two days later...

Numbering books is dangerous. I have shelves of the @adelphiedizioni.bsky.social Biblioteca books and the missing #s pain me. I bought 8 @ndbooks.bsky.social yesterday and I ask myself: why can't I have them all? At least the @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social aren't #-ed so I don't know what's missing.

Osamu Dazai, The Beggar Student, book cover. NDP. Translated by Sam Bett.

This was fantastic. My first Dazai, the translation is beautiful. I minored in Japanese too long ago and too far away and I cannot recreate what the original language could be but/and/yet feel that Sam Bett did something special with this translation. I'll want more Dazia and more Bett in my future.

I really need to know what "doodly squat" is in the original Japanese. Anyone? [I did three years of Japanese as an undergrad and this never surfaced.]

Had a New Directions purchasing glitch today.

I made it five months into my year of no buying books. I defend myself by saying I need these five books for an important project. Weak argument. Agreed. I shall now return to not buying books.

Unintended effect: about to return a book and re-buy it from a different publisher.

Fitzcarraldo, Notting Hill Editions, Dalkey, Eridanos Library, Soho Crime. And on it goes.

I started reshelving the books by publisher at zero dark thirty. Started with the easy ones: NYRB, NDP, Europa, Adelphi, Loeb, and I must say, this makes the shelves very pleasing. Many more to go. I find it makes me want to shop differently, as well. (Poetry is shelved separately, by poet.)

Inexplicable that it will take two months for Google to delete Fitbit data.

Libraries are so beautifully disruptive.

I am always amazed that people walk through our (open) gate, ten feet on to our property, to throw their bags of dog poop into our closed trash bins.

Is it comparable?

Is it relevant?

I found the 1882 record of the delivery to the municipality, of a baby found wrapped in cloth and abandoned, my great-grand-mother. They gave her the last name Selva which makes me wonder if she was found in the forest.

<shakes head> Author is the Washington Bureau Chief. Maybe he's hoping for an administration job.

The first line of the Guardian story on the Trump Epstein Titanic statue -- "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets" should get some fired.

I have not been particularly success in one of the languages. Maybe I need another language (or two) to not curse in, up my success as a percentage.

I am a mere few weeks away from a complete draft of this PhD. One day soon this shall all just live in the haze of memory.

Last night I dreamt I was under the stripey big top doing divinations and wow my friends do I have news for you.

Magnet Brain - Seven Dipper (Official Video) YouTube video by Magnet Brain

This is so beautiful and makes me miss Mongolia.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi3p...