I am developing super BS skills. I think I have my lecture on Byzantine intellectual culture, to be delivered before an audience of friendly philhellenes, ready after half an hour of scribbling on a piece of paper and making notes. My main points are there and I am ready to give them all my enthusiasm in the process of delivery. Speaking of delivery I am already dreaming of pizza and comfort food while I sit with friends to see whether mr cardboard, currently repackaged into the Goracle, will get an Oscar, proceed to Oslo for the peace Nobel and then run for president. Still the food is not here yet and it is not clear that one should even wish for Gore to run once again. My only company is a furball on my side and the desire to check the news once more for more insigt in what appears as an inevitable slide towards US war against Iran. So I leave this for more news.

It is odd to find oneself in a situation which makes posting on the venue feel like a novel experience. It has been a while since I have been active here and I still wonder as to the reasons behind my silence. In anycase, on a grey day, sitting at N's dinning table, itself a French-Canadian's family heirloom, I am writing a lecture for Tuesday, while bemoaning the fact that I am not out with N and her friends eating lunch at a fancy restaurant. I have to think that I am saving money and that I actually need to work, in order to justify to myself my domestic status. My home search is still going on, more properties appear every day and more are turned down on account of one or another concern. Work is going well, though I need to be filling forms for a whole spate of bureaucratuc issues, and teaching has improved dramatically after the sluggish begining of this term.

I now feel they are enjoying the lectures as much as I do. I am now looking forward to my trip to Greece, to seeing friends, checking out my new property and just spending time with a bunch of young people, who may or may not have the energy to work after all their partying. Beyond that I feel I need to see friends, but I am too reluctant to pick up the phone and call as it simply is not the same. Hopefully sailing will pan out. On other news, it seems I have an in with the ministry of culture to get free Greek books for the program. I will be submitting quite a budget for that. It makes me happy to even think of the shipping list.

It has been a while. I do not know what makes a medium desirable over one specific period of time and then less so over another one. What is it that led me to not write for all this while. And of course, what is it that got me back on it? Well, I have been doing what Vancouverites are supposed to spend most of their times doing. I have been looking at real estate and have been gaging my options. So much so that I have finally submitted an offer and now I am on the receiving end of an email or phone line which in a few hours could land me my first apartment. Chances are it wont, as there are some issues that are not resolved yet on the money front, yet this process has been enough to divert my attention. It has also been somewhat interesting as you get to know the city better and decide what it is you like and what not of it as you make your choice. Phone rung, I am informed I am on a bidding war with someone. Hopefully it will not become too excessive. This is realtime. I do not foresee that I will be a home owner by tomorrow, but who knows.

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