Bits

What I'm thinking about:
Margaret Atwood's take on arts funding. If you haven't read it already, do. And check out the dirty little debate over it at Bookninja, where, if one must take sides, I'd be trumpeting merit over financial need. Not that any of this affects me personally, apart from my being a citizen-consumer of "art."

Atwood starts her piece hinting at a kind of art-brain-drain, a problem that might indeed be helped by having money thrown at it. But she doesn't go anywhere with that grain for an argument, and no one else is pecking at it, which has me thinking, more than anything, that my comprehension skills are defective and deficient.

What I'm puzzling over:
How to translate "twunt."

What I'm dreaming about:
Sex in space.

What made me sad:
Solveig Dommartin died.

What I'm reading:
I'm in the final stretch of China Miéville's Un Lun Dun. At some point this evening I'll retrieve from my go-everywhere bag Firmin, by Sam Savage, the opening pages of which had me laughing out loud on the metro earlier this week.

A week into February and I haven't cracked a chunkster — I'm leaning toward Powers' Goldbug Variations, it being the shortest of my options and thus seemingly perfectly suited to this shortest of months for my one-a-month plan. But I just don't know yet.

I never figured I was susceptible to the February blahs, but the last few years would give evidence to the contrary. This year, so far, so blah. Reading, blah. Blogging, blah. Cat puking all over my bed, blah. Helena home sick, blah.

What I'm listening to:
Thelonious Monk.

What I'm going to do next:
Nap. Me and Monk and Miéville, with the kid and the cat.