Out of Touch (Out of Time*)

Wow - THIS is how out of touch I am. It never even occurred to me that 'I'm John Locke' would be anything other than the result of a 'What political philosopher are you?' quiz.

It also shows me how out of touch my subject matter is to the world out there. I mean, they wouldn't name a character on a TV show William Shakespeare or Charles Darwin, would they? Because people have, like, you know, HEARD of those people. But the name of probably the most important thinker of the principles at the heart of the American revolution and founding? Nah, why would anybody have heard of that guy - let's make him the bald character!!

I don't watch LOST, but I wonder if they have this character sneak in references to the importance of protecting 'life, liberty, and property'?

*Words in parentheses are nothing to do with the content of the post - just a gratuitous and paraphrased Hall and Oates reference.

Bullet point update

• a bird shat on my shoulder this morning. gross. ill boding for the semester that started today? hm.


• the bird we ate last night (a chicken) fell apart like it had done yoga all its life. may it be reborn as a calm asana guru. or perhaps the bird this morning was karma for the bird last night. hm.


• 5 workouts a week. not 6. 6 too hard. me lazy. 5 plenty.


• gave in to Peets promotion for Yemeni village coffee. was it the 1,001 nights Orientalism? or the cute village-y pic? or the fact that they called them 'micro-lots'? I'll never know.


• books: Winterson's Written on the Body in-progress.


• books: Martin Amis is a bit (lot?) of an arse and it kinda shows in his prose. not a huge fan after House of Meetings.


• film: Waitress: should be cute and yet its cuteness makes light of rape within marriage. I think: not okay. not okay. not okay.

here endeth the list.

10 Things I've done that you probably haven't

Got the idea from Stonesthrow, so here goes:

1. Organised and led an sleep-over in the Natural History Museum in Denver. For 500 Girl Scouts. With live snakes.
   
2. Been vigorously scrubbed (while naked) by an elderly Japanese woman at a public bath in Kyoto, having demonstrated my utter incompetence in the practice of public bathing.
   
3. Seen a dead body at the side of the Jumna river behind the Taj Mahal. Good times.
   
4. Been introduced as an honoured guest to a conference in Bangladesh. with the PM in the room. in Bangla. ick on many levels.
   
5. Seen the Sistine ceiling at 1 foot distance. (Refrained from touching it, sadly.)
   
6. Mounted this 19th century shadow puppet on plexiglass and carefully coloured each tiny thread to match the object.
   
7. Met Hiroshi Hara and heard him discuss this project of his before it was completed, and asked a question. Was invited to return any time.
   
8. Wrote lyrics to 'And then I Read Foucault', as well as several other political theorist anthems.
   
9. Sang solo at Boettcher Concert Hall.
   
10. Drove on the 10 from Santa Monica to Claremont seeing only half a dozen other cars.
    

New year's resolutions: books and rowing

A bit of time since the ol' last post. ah well.

Been reading, rowing, and relaxing (oddly different than Debbie and Doyle's three R's: "I believe in the three R’s—“R” children “R” “R” future.").

My new year's resolution is to work out 6 days a week. Because otherwise I am rather lazy (and even with this resolution I'm rather lazy) and so I need some sort of discipline and pattern to do things properly. Working out 6 days a week is rather difficult, it turns out. First there's the showering. Well, not first, obviously, but this is my primary issue with the regime. I dislike bathing. What can I say. Then there's the clothing, and the time, and the scheduling of it all. And the other things like lying on the couch that you can't do if you're rowing every day. Sigh. But it will be good for me. I have as yet not fallen off the wagon. I am recording each workout in my new Battlestar Gallactica calendar (huzzah!), in hopes that some of Starbuck's buffness will transfer. (For I do not have the legs to aspire to Six's physique. Some things are genetic. Sigh.)

F's new year's resolution is to copy No.3 over at FFB. Well, only in the resolution sense. Book a week. This results in two things: I am reading a book a week and F is working out nigh 6 days a week. Which is, also, good.

As forementioned I am lazy, and thus I have discovered that on the long rows it's lovely to listen to books on iPod. I finished Jane Austen's Persuasion last week (all 8.5 hours of it) and I believe that Austen should only be listened to. For it was sooo much better than reading it. So I highly recommend trying this out if you have had difficulty dealing with the classics. I have run into the problem that audiobooks are expensive. Something about paying actors to read them? Huh. For those wishing to explore the classics, however, there is a possible solution: LibriVox. Public domain works read by volunteers. It's the last bit that I will report back on. One doesn't want to hear an amateur drone on for 8 hours. But these people must be dedicated to the project, so perhaps it works. I'll let you know.

Books read since Christmas: Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman), Spook Country (William Gibson), House of Meetings (Martin Amis), and of course Persuasion (Jane Austen).

no expert

I have been called out from the end-of-year/beginning-of-year haze to comment, in my capacity as 'expert' on the loss of Bhutto last week to assassination. I have been reading OpenDemocracy's authors on this, along with the usual press coverage; salon's various articles are helpful, including a summation of the South Asian press's reactions, and several comments on the rather sad and pathetic reactions from the US's presidential hopefuls on both sides turning this into something related to 9/11 (Guiliani, natch) or something related to the US's borders (er, it's really, oddly not completely always about you, people). Others have commented on the potential better than I could; see Juan Cole in Salon as well. Perhaps the most annoying element of the coverage is the 'when I met Benazir' trope--wasn't she lovely and oo! so powerful! so manipulative! Hitchens is the worst on this (to be fair: it's an obituary, but still.); Fred Halliday also goes a bit in this direction.

I am not a Pakistan expert. This is perhaps indicative of the divisions within South Asia since I became a scholar more than a decade ago--despite teaching the entire region in various contexts, my focus is largely India. I'm somewhat still in shock from the Bhutto assassination--not surprised, I suppose, but in shock, in the way that one knows a sick relative will die, but then when it happens it's still sudden. Ascertaining who killed her will be difficult; it was one thing when you could capture the assassin (Godse killing Gandhi) and figure it out--even then most of my students think that Gandhi was killed by a Muslim. (Except that it was a Hindu fundamentalist upset that Gandhi was meeting with Muslims in an attempt to bridge post-Partition communal divisions. But close!) Here we have a shooting/suicide bomb combo. Musharraf had warned her not to speak in Rawalpindi back in November because of security concerns; it may indeed have been people acting in what they felt was the military/Musharraf best interest, but I'm not sure it was truly in *his* best interest to have her assassinated.

Bhutto also kept her family away from Pakistan; in part because her husband is not liked--the corruption charges and money scandals surrounding her are usually about him--Hitchens' obit pointed me to this NYT article detailing some of that. She also anticipated being the focus of assassination attempts and wanted her family away from that. It's difficult enough to protect major world leaders from this sort of thing--Hilary's campaign headquarters was taken over by a crazy person not too long ago--but when you're addressing public rallies out on the streets in Pakistan, it becomes a bit trickier to claim any level of 'security' for that leader. I haven't met Bhutto, but I've been in crowds in South Asia.

The PPP is her family's party. We in the West have been led to believe it was/is the saviour of democracy for Pakistan. I don't know. Perhaps she/it would have been. But the corruption charges are real. The demagoguery that her obituary 'when I met Bhutto' writers talk about is equally real. If democracy means civil society with space for dialogue and debate, then Pakistan needs a free judiciary back--that looks unlikely. And some sort of balance in order to acknowledge a bit of the Islam-centred identity of the nation (along with its multiethnicity) without tipping into extremism would be lovely. The Dubai-raised, Oxford-educated 19 year old now heading the PPP may provide that. But not this year.

Much more to think about re: US interests in the region and the Euro-American fascination with playing with this end of the Silk road (most recently from the 19th-20th century British Great Game through the mujahideen to Musharraf). It is the crossroads of culture. It's too bad that's been a curse rather than a blessing for the last little while.

Vote for Dan!!

All must go now and vote for Dan so that he can be victorious! He has created a lovely hallmark card for the (RED) campaign and he is lovely and thus he must win. (Logically. Obviously.)

vote early. vote often.

three books on the way to a hermitage

I was going to blog on: 'Killer app' for the misanthropic--a discussion of how instead of facebook or twitter we should have an on-line app for those of us (me) who are not big fans of, er, people. Hermitbook. Goawaybook. MyCave. I still think this a good idea. perhaps someone out there (not me) will run with this so that I don't have to interact with anyone.

But then I had to go interact with people at a conference, which was lovely (it's always fine once you're interacting. it's the prospect of doing so that's so dread-ful.) and there was no interwebs. how could this be? I don't know. but no interwebs. very calming not to have the ol' interface constantly, I will say. More time for reading.

I read Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide a few weeks back, to coincide (coincidentally) with the cyclone hitting precisely the region the book is set in--the Sundarbans of Bangladesh. It is excellent, as usual. Several things recommend it: it is realistic without ignoring the supernatural. It is not entirely depressing despite being a novel written about India. It has lovely science-y bits about river dolphins without being preachy. It does the 'each chapter a different POV' thing which doesn't quite meld the way you want it to--my one critique. But y'all know how I dislike conceits. That said, it comes together. it makes sense. it is about the past, the present, the otherworldly, generations, modernity, tradition, colonialism, socialism, and all that good stuff. plus did I mention dolphins?

I finished Spook Country a week or so ago, which was good--nothing can top Neuromancer for Gibson, and the best part about Spook Country is its short-story quality. Not that it's short. But that it has the flavour of a tight, small story carefully, expertly fleshed out. I liked it. Had Gibson's aesthetic of the future is now, but didn't have the draw of the female protagonist in his Pattern Recognition--she was an amazing, insightful, full character, and the lead in Spook Country isn't quite there. So, if you haven't read Gibson, shame. shame. shamies. Read Neuromancer, and Pattern Recognition, and Spook Country.

I also finished Richard Powers' Operation Wandering Soul which is about narrative. Well, what isn't really. (obviously.) but it's about children's stories, fables, history, crusades, telling stories to understand the (horrible) world. it opens with an amazingly accurate and beautiful--nay, sublime (er, goes without saying as it's Powers) description of driving in LA. I'm not sure Powers 'gets' LA in the same way he completely and utterly embodies the Midwest, but the opener is brilliant. And the re-telling of the Pied Piper in the middle of the book is nothing less than genius. It's Powers. Say no more. say no more.

Christmas Drinks

I have *two* e-mails with the above title in their subject-line in my in-box right now. How cool is that? to my recollection, at the three institutions I worked at in the US, we never (either officially or informally) did Christmas drinks--one, because it is utterly un-PC (part of that 'war on Christmas' I'm sure we'll hear about again soon) and two, because people drive everywhere in the US and so drinking with the driving not so much, and three, alcoholism aside, folks in the US don't drink enough. In a celebratory fashion, I mean. Or, everyone in Britain is an alcoholic. Either interpretation is plausible. I will debate it over drinks, multiple times, in the next week or so. Huzzah.

spam + viagra = perfect holiday dish

My fetish for science blogs has led to some extremely productive locales, not least is the following site. Because Spam = good and viagra = hilarious and so there you are. The dedication of some people to art (wax molds!) and food (blue sushi rice!) is quite astounding.

Link here.

compost-level 2

Back in the spring you will recall (ha!) that I made the move to try to reduce the waste we put in landfill by getting a bokashi bin set and fermenting kitchen waste. the idea is that you can then dig the waste into the soil and it decomposes really fast without attracting animals. We discovered one major problem with this theory: Luke the dog likes the smell of the bokashi bran stuff and thus, er, in fact digs the stuff out of the ground, licks the dirt into which it's been dug, and generally addresses bokashi as if it were one huge chocolate bar. I tried planting containers with it and I dug some of it into the front garden (where Luke doesn't go)--that seemed to work. I also put it in the regular rubbish pickup once or twice, reassured that once it got to landfill it would, indeed, decompose faster. Not sure that really works as a justification, but there you are.

So my conclusion now is that the bokashi bin system is a gateway drug. Despite all my best efforts at resisting becoming 'that guy', I have now installed a very simple compost bin in the corner of the garden into which the bokashi bin contents go once they've fermented a bit. Along with leaves, clippings and other crazy stuff. For example, I discovered in 'experiment 1' with bokashi that eggshells don't so much decompose. I knew this from advice from others, but it seemed such a pain, and really crazy gardner talk to do something different with the shells. Now it seems I'm on the path to really crazy gardener.

I now microwave the shells after using them, crush them a bit, and once there's a critical mass of shells (don't ask what a 'critical mass' of shells actually means)--I put them in the food processor and grind them into dusty shelly bits. Now that I have a compost bin these can go in there as well. I'm that guy. so sad.

I still don't like gardening--never fear. It is too much akin to cleaning house: always stuff to do, never done, and frustrating.

so I have now reached compost--level 2. not sure what this means, but I will report back on the compost progress and whether it leads to things like caring about shrubberies and the like.

Gender, Photography, and the Taliban

Surfing around Slate this morning and came across a video-essay that photographer Thomas Dworzak put together with journalist/author Ahmed Rashid. It is an extended commentary on the practice of young Taliban recruits having their photographs taken in studios in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, a regime that banned images of living things. Many interesting issues intersect in these images, from representation of human beings under a strict no-human-image regime to the relations between the people in the photographs to their own desire to be photographed, despite the repression of such activities by the very people these men worked for.

The photographer who collected these studio images along with the journalist who provided commentary both focus on the 'Gilbert and George'-like effeminization/homoeroticism of the images. Despite Dworzak partially dismissing this interpretation at the beginning of the video, the narration (by Rashid at this point) goes on to discuss various practices under Taliban rule of ancient-Greek-like mentoring relationships between an older man and a younger man, and link what they see as effeminate, intimate (hand holding) poses/images in the studio pictures with this practice. In the end, the video's reading of the pictures links these images to iconographies of homosexuality arising from cultures far removed from the Talibani one. In addition, the video shows no awareness that it is precisely the kind of male-male ancient Greek practice that largely sparked the critique of the search for 'gay history' and produced 'queer theory'--a space where acknowledging that different periods in history, cultures, classes have a wide range of sexual practices, and that just because your particular cultural space labels them as 'gay' or 'feminine' does not mean that those participating would do the same.

The video plays upon a presumed incongruity between the effeminate nature of the images and the perception of a unified strict Taliban regime. This seems to me to misread the images, which can, if read in context, be understood as articulations of power and strength without the overarching femininity Rashid and Dworzak see. It is odd that they did not link these images to well-documented and thoroughly-researched scholarship on 20th century studio photography patterns in South Asia as a whole (including Pakistan and Afghanistan) that include all of the elements found in these photographs: air-brushing, Swiss mountain backdrops, guns-as-props, men holding hands. The work of Chris Pinney in this area is widely known and easily accessible.

I'm not trying to protest the idea that there are certainly both gay men within the Taliban and also male-male sexual practices that may not fall within the 'gay' label. (The assumptive relation between gay and feminine is troubling, but that's another comment for another time.)

I am protesting the simplistic reading of images outside of any local, historical, or visual context. When you read images, just as when you read text or hear about an event, you need to look around to see if these images really are odd or strange, or if it's just your own encounter with them that makes them so. The photographs in this piece are part of a long history of South Asian photographic iconography that goes back to princely photographic portraits of the 19th century. Ripping them out of that context and putting them in the 'Gilbert and George' contemporary installation art context does not provide a responsible articulation of what these images meant to those sitting for them, for those taking them, or for those viewing them.

From a Euro-American 21st century eye alone they may appear effeminate. To assume that assessment is universal is to repeat Orientalist, sexist assumptions about men in the non-West ('non-European men are effeminate and, of course since women are weak, this means they are weak') and to underestimate the strength and power communicated through these images.

Perhaps another greek concept--hubris--might be appropriate here?

onions

this seems to be veering into food blog. but it is that time of year, traditional harvest time in parts of the northern hemisphere, and so one finds oneself in the kitchen cooking warm yummy things and the rest.

we get a weekly organic veg delivery from a farm less than four miles from here. the lovely organic man delivers the big paper bag of veg in his white biodiesel van, much like the one I imagine Willie Nelson drives. or wished he could drive, were he not so famous. Luke finds this van to be extremely aggravating and so barks incessantly at it, in a seemingly odd antagonistic relation with saving the nature of which he is our in-house representative. 'dog of the wild' we call him.

in the veg delivery each week is about a pound of lovely onions. the problem is F doesn't eat onions, or really any of what I call the 'Italian' family of vegetables: red/green peppers, the entire onion family, tomatoes, olives (okay not a veg, but neither are tomatoes, so...). anything you'd find on a traditional Italian-American pizza, aside from the meat (we love the meat). you get the picture.

so the onions pile up and I can't throw them out for, obviously, that would defeat the purpose of receiving the veg delivery, namely: saving the world. if you throw out the onions you're supporting the terrorists, right?

so, yesterday I had about 4 lbs of onions and decided something must be done. opened lovely farm cookbook gifted to us by friends from Mankato (go Mavericks, except when they're playing the Gophers of course). I made two huge batches of onion marmalade. I had encountered this substance before via a gift from an English friend (our rwgbi/football guru) and decided it's the best thing to do with onions, period. it involves, in addition to the obvious, red wine, red wine vinegar, sherry, honey, dates, and lots of butter. then you let it simmer for an hour and a half until it gets all thick and dark and congeal-y. it's lovely on burgers, slab-o-cheddar cheese sandwiches, and, according to the cookbook, as a pizza topping. I eat it on top of meat, myself. but that's me. mm. meat. mm. onions. what's not to like?

Duck update

The duck was lovely in all of the aforementioned ways. I then proceeded to become cooking geek: made duck stock from the duck bones, made homemade cornbread and then used both to make cornbread stuffing for thanksgiving, celebrated last night (Friday) at the Cornish-Scottish-American friends' house with Welsh, French, and English guests in attendance. Much fun and (too much) brandy had by all.

Our menu:
Apricot cranberry sauce
green beans with bacon
Cornbread stuffing
turkey
mashed potatoes
gravy
grilled sweet potato halves with yogurt-dill sauce
ratatouille (completely traditional of course)
slightly mashed parsnips roasted in the grease from one of the turkeys
green salad with pomegranate seeds
french bread (aka 'freedom bread')

butternut squash pie
lemon cheesecake
key lime pie
cinnamon rolls
mince pies

2007 Beaujolais Nouveau
other wine, red and white
whisky
brandy

Advise and Consent (1962)

This Henry Fonda/Washington insider film is amazing, from the framing of the architecture (one of the first shots focuses on the 'In god we trust' inscription in the senate chamber while including in the bottom of the frame a somewhat rancorous debate spurred on by hovering press) to the sugary-sweet construction of the suburban home one senator inhabits, one that is revealed to be both very real and an utter façade. What's great about the film, if you (like me) know nothing about it before watching it, is that the plot is a sleeper plot. It starts out very slowly and vanilla but then grows into something utterly other than that. And the ending is brutal.

From our jaded perspective at the beginning of the 21st century, it starts with the fervor over the nomination the President has made for his Chief of Staff. In fact, the first scenes are very like the short-lived show K Street, with a senator getting the news of the nomination by looking at the morning headline, rushing over to a colleague's hotel room, where he finds him already on the phone with the president protesting the choice.

The rest of the film is about the senate committee hearings vetting the nominee. Wow. Sounds like the action film of the century, no? No. But it's fascinating in the way it exposes the workings of politics, the problem with idealists, the legacy of WWII, the various subcultures (the unmarried hostess of Washington poker games and gala parties; the gay New York club/bohemian culture), gender relations, and the way in which before the penetration of the media into the minutiae of every public figure's life, these people could walk around Washington, have meetings in the open, discuss issues--all without a gaggle of reporters everywhere they went. The unfolding of the plot moves it from political sparring almost to the point of political thriller.

recommended.

Duck à L'Orange and other mistakes

Having eaten a low-sugar diet for four or five years now, the ol' tastebuds have changed such that things others consider to taste 'normal' taste, to me, unbelieveably sweet. Like Havarti cheese. Or low-fat milk. or 85% chocolate. Probably my cooking states unbelieveably bland and/or spicy and/or something to other people. Who knows. But one of my favourite meats (mm. meat. it's all good) is duck. there are several excellent reasons for this. [note: my sole reader who does not eat duck for reasons that they are lovely cute creatures and it is cruel might want to stop reading here. also my other two readers who are vegetarian. so, the one carnivorous friend that's left, read on.]

1. Duck is fatty. Fat is good. It makes meat taste good and it helps with cooking the meat and did I mention it's lovely?
2. Because of #1, duck meat is usually quite moist and juicy.
3. If you like dark meat on a turkey, you love duck. It all has that taste of dense but juicy dark meat. And the ducks aren't (I don't think?) perversely fattened to produce large breasts for the (again perverse) taste for breast meat that the North American public seems to crave.

We like our birds breast-heavy with thin legs. Hm. What else fits that description? Coincidence? But I digress.

4. Duck is often used in fabulous Chinese cooking--and I'm not talking about the drive-up hole-in-the-wall university take-away Chinese that we all know and love for entirely other reasons having to do with fried, breaded goodness.

Duck is often on the menu here in the UK at 'normal' 'British' restaurants of the post-1980s variety (that is, the food is quite good and well-prepared). We went to one such restaurant which is excellent where the duck leg entree is served with this amazing lentil/dal-like sauce. It goes perfectly with the richness of the duck meat, providing a sort of horizontal taste next to the wavy curviness of the duck (spatial/visual thinker here--bear with me).

Our dining companions also ordered the duck and didn't like it. Their complaint: too salty.

But it was not salty at all. No salt was used in the sauce, our friendly waiter graciously reported. My conclusion from this? British/North American palates expect duck + something sweet. Whether it's an orange glaze or a Chinese plum sauce, the idea is that duck is equated with sweetness. To have a lovely perfectly spiced horizontal low-level buzz of dal underneath the duck means to be forced (against their will) to taste the duck itself. And so, Duck à l'orange has ruined duck for an entire population spanning the Atlantic. Very very sad.

This is borne out by my experience today trying to find a recipe to use to cook the duck I purchased this week in my Sainsbury's delivery. It was on sale. I'd never cooked duck before and I thought: hey, I like duck! and then hey, why not? So I have a duck in the fridge. Sorry Ruth. I looked in a variety of cookbooks, and aside from the basic roasting instructions for all birds in the Good Housekeeping, all of the recipes involved apricot jam or some sort of citrus-honey sauce or, in one interesting innovation, a honey-thyme sauce which sounds lovely but frankly still ends up in the too sweet category.

I did find a recipe--Madhur Jaffrey to the rescue once again--she's got a whole stuffed duck recipe in her Invitation to Indian Cooking that looks lovely. It has raisins and dried apricots in it (sweet) but they are in the stuffing, entirely different from a glaze. I may cook dal with it as well. I will report back.

8.5 x 11 is so wrong

isn't it? it just occurred to me (again) that this was the case. A4 is an elite, svelte paper size, is it not? hm.

Activist judges

FFB noted the disparity between the sacrifices that the Pakistani judiciary and body of lawyers has made in the face of martial law (oh--sorry. it's not martial law it's 'emergency-plus' which I think is in fact a vitamin-C drink, is it not?).

This article from OpenDemocracy illuminates some of the reasons for the ire of the lawyers in particular, and also illustrates why the announcement today by Musharraf that elections will be held in January does not, in fact, solve the underlying problem. It also belies what I'm perceiving in the press coverage in the UK the distinct impression that Bhutto is the country's only/best hope--an impression that seems to stem largely from the fact that she feels 'comfortable' to a western audience, where Musharraf never quite did, despite appearing on the Daily Show. She too benefits from this emergency-plus situation with corruption cases suspended against her, as Raja at OpenDemocracy argues.

yea, o holy book review...

I would so much like to write book reviews like this one from time to time. Well, only when it's entirely appropriate, as this one is. Check it out.

Macbeth

1. No, Patrick Stewart was not as brilliant as you would expect him to be. He was quite a bit better than that.
2. And still, it was Kate Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth that almost stole the show.
3. But the real winner was the production and direction.
4. And the icing on the cake? Sitting next to Marina Sirtis in the best seats in the house

What's on My iPod (Touch)

As this otherwise worthless post indicated, I do not have a new iPhone, but I do have a new iPod touch. Like the rest of you (the sane ones, that is) I covet an iPhone, but both options available to me at the moment are really non-starters:

1. Buy a US iPhone and 'unlock' it.

It's simply too much money for a device that could be rendered useless with a firmware upgrade, and frankly, as much as I love the command line, it's all a bit too much work for me.

2. Pick up the UK iPhone on o2 when released in November.

A. 35 quid a month is steep for someone who NEVER uses his phone and who currently pays less than £8/month.

B. The UK and Europe moved their networks from 2g to 3g. The US didn't, really, but instead upgraded to '2.5G' in the form of adding EDGE to the 2G network. The iPhone, as we all know, is not 3g; it's an EDGE device. There are reasons that that sucks, but putting those aside, here's the dealbreaker: there is no viable EDGE network in the UK. o2 is 'bragging' that they have been putting EDGE in place and will have 35% coverage at release. 35% is not a typo; it is, however, unacceptable.

But o2 has done something right compared with AT&T. They have bundled wifi hotspot coverage into their package deal. Even better, the hotspot provider, The Cloud, will give you unlimited access for your iPod touch for less than a fiver a month!

So, until I can experience the glory of the iPhone I picked up an iPod Touch (purchased in dollars - which are worthless, by the way - of course). This gives me a chance to check out the new UI without spending lots of money. And yes, it is all it is hyped to be. And more.

So what's on my iPod Touch?

• a random selection of about 35 albums from my collection
  
• all my contacts and calendars
  
• a bunch of youtube bookmarks
  
• Battlestar Galactica Episode
  
• Deadwood Episode
  
• Brian Manzella's Confessions of a Former Flipper
  
• Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' (the subject of my next blog)