Here I am sipping cocoa and feeling as if I have worked for the day. The paper I am editing is progressing slowly and I may have it ready for publication in time indeed. On the side today was State of the Union day. The one time of the year when the political establishment in Washington practices synchronized applause. Like pioneers in a Maoist parade the two sides of the political divide practice contrapuntal applause and symphonic acclamations in the best tradition of Byzantine court ceremonial. You would be hard pressed to find a democratic spectacle so steeped in fascist ideas of consensus and respect of authority. In any case W's speech was predictably vacuous and meaningless, even as it conveyed the message of a defiant but practically defeated politician. It is those we need to fear most of course. Then Jim Webb, the junior senator from Virginia delivered a speech steeped in old-style Democratic populism that was a joy to follow. I dare not believe that it is genuine. Yet, unlike the cynical lefties I will say that if rhetoric like his starts dominating, soon, one way or another the practice has to follow. Words, even if initially empty, become part of the public discourse. Then suddenly from a republican full spectrum rhetorical domination, with the theory of bad government filling the air like an overweight American fills an economy class seat, we may find ourselves in a very different world where a lefie type of rhetoric becomes the new common sense. Optimistic? Sounds so, yet I hope it is also true. Realistic? I do not know.

I have been sloppy and lazy. Its been a while since I wrote here and I am not sure what the reasons for the silence really are. I am sitting at a black IKEA couch, postponing the beginning of my lecture writing with this activity. My whole back and neck ache. Have no clue why. Posture is one thing yet it feels as if there is something else. Could it be that I managed to stress about the article I want to submit in ten days for publication? In any case it makes you wonder what your mind can do to your body. Then it makes you want to explore your insurance options and see how you can get those legendary free massages that supposedly our insurance plan at SFU include.

Yesterday went climbing. Did better than ever before. 5.10b appears feasible at times though overhangs are still problematic. Now I need to work

Evidence of immense shallowness and emphasis on appearance rather than substance comes with the latest rearrangement of this blogger's apartment. It came out of a whim and out of a subliminal desire to destroy my back, which I nearly did. Interrupted I did my reading on Polybios and here I was moving furniture around to create a novel space. I was apprehensive as to the effect of the change for I felt that the ideological underpinning of the re-arrangement was bound to draw criticism. I was moving my couch around to make it face my new Flat Screen Monitor. Basically I was creating a standard American home, centered around the TV. On the other hand, the adept diplomat in me consulted his long line of effective escapes from the aforementioned castigations and decided that the re-orientation was rather an attempt to properly enjoy the leasures of this apartment's fireplace. Yes, I was not facing a TV screen, but rather I was getting a window to honorable pyromania. Here we go then with the result. I am happy with it. On other news I climbed after almost a month and did much better than expected.
This called for celebration which included stuffing self with a double bacon cheeseburger at the Moderne Burger join in Kitsilano. I felt the effects of the indulgence for a few hours. I did not regrat it however. The night was completed with the screening, on the said new Flat Screen, of a film called the "Weather man." Better than expected. Nothing great, but good. So, that is all. Tonight is going to be dedicated to Spike Lee and "Do the right thing."

Lazy. this is the only possible description of my blogging status. Too many things to do, or more to the point, too much good time to be had doing all those things. A discussion recently in a venerable forum, regarding the (de)merits of owning a sailing boat has brought to my mind a tiny issue of terminology that cropped up the other day as I was sipping expensive Belgian beer at Stella's in very good company. The term is alterno-yuppie. Like anything with the term alterno in it it indicates that it deviates from the mainstream. In our parlance mainstream means bad. It always has to be a tributary for us to be satisfied. Yet the term alterno, cannot hide the fact that yuppie is there to be dealt with. In our case, as 4 eyes were scouring the crowd at Stella's it became clear that we were approving of the clientele even as we were ready to characterise it as yuppyish. Hence the term alterno, added as a kosher blessing on Oreo cookies. As long as something is alterno it cannot be all that bad. Which of course means that as long as we baptise it alterno, it can even be pork, and we are still righteous. Which takes us back to the discussion of the (de)merits of owning a boat. Are my friends all alterno-yuppies? The income is there, the lifestyle is kind of alterno-yuppyish, and of course, they are my friends so I need to baptise them into a Kosher form of existence. And ultimately, if my friends are a-yuppies, what am I, an a-yuppie groupie? We may need to work more on those definitions

This is the image of Byzantium. The photo is of the post-thrash metal band Byzantine from Charleston West Virginia. Not exactly your standard image of the effeminate Greek of the Crusading sources is it? The lecture is ready, I am pretty confident that all is going to be right for the first week. Now I need to make sure all the powerpoint aids are present in the rooms and of course I will need to check the rooms so that I know where I teach. One more semester begins. Listening to Morphine at the moment and eating lentils. My life is as simple as it could be at the moment. I feel like having a beer but I am not sure I can be bothered to go out and get it. Back to the powerpoint. A domani

So I saw this film. Sodeberg film with George "ER stud" and Kate "Elizabeth girl." I was ipressed. The filming was totally convinving. Unlike the pretentious black and white filming of Spielberg's Schindler's list, this was a real return to old Holywood with all the cinematic realities that this is associated with. Camera working in the same way, cuts into scenes similar and the acting more or less fitting in these patterns. Acting, which especially in the case of Blanchet was impressive to say the least. I also liked the story. Its treatment of the moral dilemas associated with survival, with all the necessary treason and collapse of essential ethical rules is solid even as it comes part and parcel with a police story and a seedy romance. Overall I liked all the Casablanca echoes and appreciated the greater depth of inquiry in human nature, even as I ejoyed the simple but well presented detective story. Enough film criticism for now.

Tunneling, turning, walking, sniffing, and exploring olfactory excitement, I move like this rat in a space of imaginary culinary excess. I cook things simple and easy to reproduce but I imagine recipes of Byzantine complexity and modernist aesthetic simplicity. Then I leave the ladel and pick up the laptop in order to sneak, like this rat, in some other space of hidden arcana. Other than that, I enjoy the sun when it crashes the weather-men's party uninvited. Its always a treat as good as the Torrone I got from P in Athens. Over and out for now, need to write a bit on Attaleiates' life. Cooking up the life of a historical person requires the care of a good chef.

I am at home and I want to talk about mobility, the modern term for nomadism. I mean personal mobility, the one that takes a creature of habit and moves it to the other side of the world. I have often wondered as to why I find it so easy to escape Greece, to leave friends and family behind, and seek life elsewhere. the simple explanation that there is no job for me in Greece is certainly not adequate. If I had tried, there would have been something there for me. I did not try, which means that there is an appeal to life abroad for me that makes living away from the fatherland easier. The question that arises, however, is not whether it is I who finds it easier to leave, but rather others who find it more difficult. What makes people who are not happy in Greece so reluctant to leave? The person I am addressing here will recognise the self as the addressee of this question. I do not buy the argument about difficulties in moving, about habits that are hard to break. Why should we be reluctant to move when motion is all that can keep us alive? Routine is powerful, yet routine can be broken. I vote for mobility, I know it to be possible, it just takes organizing skills and a decision. That is the beauty of our globalized mess, the bourgeois are mobile, the bourgeois are the new nomads.

Back to rainy Vancouver and in warm arms. Also back to my office and to the minutiae of course organization. Yesterday I produced a first draft for my course syllabus and I can really see how this is going to play out over the next semester. It will be rather easy teaching this course. I am looking forward to it. Details need to be ironed out over the next few days but otherwise there is no need for stress. Other than that I am continuing work on my academic ecotone, my little biography project for Attaleiates. I have entered a part where writing gets tough and where editing will be required. I can feel my Greek get stilted and I can sense the need for simplification. Another challenge to deal with even as I start work on Polybios for the Birmingham conference. Other than that peace and normality. Home at last.