狂ったブログ

Garage-top Neko Retreats
Between Two Buildings

There were a lot of things in Tokyo that I was unaccustomed to, but the omnipresence of cats and the number of people that would fall asleep in public were the two that caught my eye the most when I was out taking photographs. My DSLR was still fairly new […]

If I have:

$100 in cash,
$200 in travelers’ checks,
$1,000 in a checking account,
$10,000 in a savings account,
$5,000 in treasury bonds,
$15,000 in stocks,
$7,000 in credit card debt,

a $20,000 student loan,
and a $500,000 house, against which I have
a $300,000 mortgage

How much money do I have?

I’ve been reading Dreams from My Father. Given the way the book is written, and how frank it is, it seems clear that when he wrote it, Barack Obama had no idea he’d ever be running for president. I’m realizing that Obama is a more radical departure from previous presidents than I’d ever […]

I’ve always wondered what the criterion referred to in the name of The Criterion Collection is. I like the name, as it seems to mysteriously imply that there is one single underlying criterion behind they use when choosing films to include in their collection.
There are other companies with the word criterion in the name, […]

Thanks to all the well-wishers. I am now thirty. 30.
Not too sure what it means. Doesn’t seem too important. My brother threw me a dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and then we went to a few bars, and I had a wonderful time. Tonight on my actual birthday, I cooked […]

[sfpl]
in the sun and in the rain
and in the day and in the night
pain is a flower
pain is flowers
blooming all the time.

Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
[wikipedia] - [imdb] - [Sunny]
On 35mm at the Kabuki with Lucía, Ben, and Roberto on 24 June 2008 at 21:45.
Even though I haven’t seen enough of Rohmer’s films to make the assertion myself, the comparison between this and Rohmer’s works seems apt. A lot of talking, walking around, […]

[wikipedia]
Started on 15 June 2008.
It’s nice to be reading more these days.
Unfortunately Philip K. Dick’s style isn’t sitting as well with me this time as it did with Do Androids Dream…, but I’ll keep plowing through it and see if I can find myself more engaged with the novel by the time I get to […]

[wikipedia]
Finished on 15 June 2008.
While it’s certainly easy to see why this would be considered such an important book, I didn’t get much out of it. It was fairly uneven and quite repetitive, and at times it felt pedantic. It was a bit of a slog in parts, but the crushing, nihilistic ending […]

Translated by William Weaver from the Italian Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore.
[wikipedia]
Read sometime in May 2008.
It was enjoyable to follow Italo Calvino in his second-person, literary-centric adventures, and it would be difficult to say whether I liked more his frame story, or the individual story fragments that the book is stitched together from. […]