(via Gawker) A photo of Dick Cheney’s bookshelf was leaked from a then-public Picassa album for some party that the Cheneys hosted at their home. We feel a Haut or Not is called for.
Had Cheney known The Great War was about World War I and not Iraq, we would’ve saved his amazon credit for a new pacemaker. That phallic shaped thing adorning the silhouetted figure on Liberty! is, of course, a gun. Glad to see him exhibiting tolerance for the french Photo du Jour. Prior to such internationalism, the only thing “of the day” concerning him was Lipitor™. One wonders if Dick can read Arabic, as seen on one of the spines. As for Kuwait, he c-couldn’t k-wait to get started.
Of course, eyes are really on those Matryoshka dolls, which has metaphorical meaning to Russians as “similar object-within-similar object,” so we can assume that the irony, while intentional, was lost in translation. “Matryoshka” comes from the latin “mother,” and the whole incumbency thing symbolizes fertility — though when looking at the dolls, the only mother that comes to mind is motherfucker.
Rating: Not
Nicholson Baker’s quirky latest novel, The Anthologist, is comprised of failed poet Paul Chowder’s ruminations on poetry and how unrequited love for it has essentially ruined his life. Through it all, though—the rejections from Paul Muldoon, Chowder’s lady friend leaving him, the failure of his floundering flying spoon poems—he clings to the words and lives of Roethke, Bogan, Swinburn, Keats and the rest with a tenacity not seen since 
As Ryan pointed out recently, the school year is now officially underway. In recognition, I thought I’d share with you my first set of notes.