The Social Pipeline

I was on the bus, talking about the asinine and unneccessary cameo perpetrated by The Dog Of Steel in Batman: Hush (seriously, The League of Super-Pets? in the DC universe? it just keeps getting worse) and I became aware that I wasn't sittting in the cool group anymore. Was I ever? So I'm thinking about sprouting a crop of acne, maybe joining the chess club. Also, one hears rumours of gamers, and the deliberate misuse of pencils and paper and dice in the halls below Health & Education. Maybe I should join those guys. They sound pretty cool. I want to go somewhere where I know someone who can plug me into the social pipeline. The gamers just may be the answer. Either that or I join the guys in poor-boy blazers who read Rainer Maria Rilke aloud outside of class and keep talking about the social dichotomies between Kerouac and Ginsberg. Yeah. Well, maybe I'll hold off on those guys.

Reading: I have read the opening lines of all his novels. Because the other day, as I was reading George Orwell's paper-mouthed Keep The Aspidistra Flying, I recalled the opening line of his much more famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aspidistra opens with a banality: "The clock struck two." Nineteen Eighty-Four opens with a parallel banality, although that opening ends with a sinister twist: "It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen." So I returned to that musty shelf in Rutherford where Orwell rots between authors he would have despised, and pulled Down And Out In Paris And London off the shelf: "The Rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning". This was getting ridiculous. A Clergyman's Daughter, then: "As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal"—this is beyond coincidence now, for sure. Coming Up For Air, third sentence: "At about a quarter to eight, I'd nipped out of bed and got into the bathroom just in time to shut the kids out." Burmese Days, second sentence: "It was only half-past eight, but the month was April, and there was a closeness in the air, a threat of the long stifling midday hours." The Road To Wigan Pier opens with the phrase, "The first sound in the morning" and even Animal Farm opens in a timely manner, with the close of the day. Will someone tell me what the blazes is going on? What does this constant reference to Chronos mean? All of this author's books open with the establishment of time. George Orwell is giving me a case of deju vu like I never knew. Everything He Ever Wrote + George Orwell

Listening: This Dan character at Said The Gramaphone has posted a solid mp3. The quality is a little shaky, but as the beggar said at Christmas, half a mug will do. It's the giving, not the getting, that counts. Which is why I'm passing this along. "Unknown Title (Bones Song) (Live)" + Wolf Parade (WP on Myspace, WP on NMC)