Old acquaintance

The impending newness of the year drags me, shamefaced, to my poor neglected blog. I could say that I've been busy getting festy in the festive season, which would be true insofar as I have spent as much time as possible garnishing myself with brandy cream. Unfortunately, that means that I've not had a single new thought. Or a thought about an old thought, my more usual MO. So instead, here is a roundup of things which I will blog about most wittily and perspicaciously as soon as I emerge from my month-long carbohydrate induced stupor.

1. Steve Fuller's The Intellectual, which my mother sent me for my birthday six months ago which I got around to reading yesterday as part of the Great Thesis Procrastination Project 2005 (new manifesto pending). Fuller is recently in the spotlight for deposing in defense of teaching intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which is another story altogether. I can't decide exactly how ballistic I'm going to go about the book. Possibly very, with lashings of withering sarcasm. Or maybe just straight-up outrage, with no sarcasm. Watch this space. But in passing, even though I said I wasn't actually going to blog about this yet, the inside flap notes about Fuller on the very sexified matte dustjacket (with spot varnish coffee cup, hem hem) say that he is a "trainee multi-media public intellectual", which I take it is supposed to be a cute witticism designed to endear the professor to us. Whatever. But dude, seriously? Is that website part of the witticism about being a trainee? Christ. My eyes are still bleeding from the wood-effect wallpaper. Ahem. Much more cerebral put-downs to come.


2. The new Nespresso coffeemaker that Christmas put into the kitchen. Have I sold out? The jury is not yet in. But damn, the coffee is fine. Perhaps I am biased by the stupid yet evocatively delicious names the coffee capsules have, like Arpeggio and Livanto. But more on that later when I am fit to make a joke.


3. World politics. What the fucking fuck? Generally I am more scared of anyone speaking in the ludicrously earnest and bloody annoying "activist" register than I am of anything they're objecting to. But that was before I worked out that I am living in 1936 Berlin.


4. Expatriatism. I'm having an identity crisis. I find my accent becoming strident suddenly. What does it mean? (Possibly a wholly-owned subsidiary of aforementioned Great Procrastination Project).

I promise to have some thoughts. Happy New Year.