squamous | where are you from? I said the modern age

Hm, 3-day weekend, here we go... I really need to go shoe shopping at some point. I have put that off so long. I think I am quasi-hobbled with what I have now... need to fix that... shoes are important.

Also I have to do something today about all the stuff I have on the old EnterAct shell machines. In the wake of Ryan's departure they are shutting them down somewhat abruptly... the web hosting and email will work, just no ssh for shell any longer. Hrmmm. I have close to 6 years of email sitting there. Do I want to gzip and download it to have a li'l archive of those years? I guess I do sorta. I better take care of that today, at the eleventh hour. Well assuming some wanker didn't jump the gun and deny access already. But, if I lose the mail, it's OK, for the most part I let stuff like that go eventually anyway. My past is not so interesting that I need to keep trawling through it. It might be nice to have some old emails from friends though; I would keep personal letters after all.

I have been reading Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight and enjoying that. It's funny, despite living in a colonized country myself, I don't think I can recall reading something so frank and seemingly evenhanded involving latter-day colonials in Africa. The text almost seems a little numb to me for some reason... it's deadpan yet funny... and kind of hung with sadness. I would recommend it for the writing alone I think, but wouldn't really expect anyone to trust that recommendation.

I dunno colonialism, imperialism, that stuff is interesting to think and talk about... how it was the order of the day and then a great crime (yes I realize it coulda been both at once... just thinking about how the sort of official position in Western society has shifted - I think). It seems like the people at the point of friction where the various cultures rubbed up against one another had pretty mixed experiences, with ample suffering included, but did the people off the front lines back home in the nation of the colonizers not reap enormous benefits? Were there any benefits to the people who were colonized? Certainly none that I can think of in the Americas... do I have an overly romantic vision of the state of pre-Columbian peoples? Maybe, but... come on even so.... Well I need to do more reading. I guess for now the one point this book reminds me of is that life isn't so soft and easy for the colonizers. Of course it seems like if you talk about any of this stuff and spare any sympathy for the colonizers or conquerors, or acknowledge any of their accomplishments at all, you are the devil. Certainly I had this experience a few years back when talking with people about the Spanish conquistadors.

Listened to the not one but two new Frank Black records this morning. Had heard some of the songs before... he played quite a few of them when I saw him in Chicago earlier this year in fact. Sounds like good stuff to me so far.

Yikes I can't believe that we will soon have The Jeffersons first season on DVD. Man. I always thought that was absolutely the most boring sitcom when I was a kid.

OK. Yeah. Have to figure out where to get shoes.... I know, I know, you're thinking, "The shoe store?"... smartass....