It's That Time of the Year Again

Friends and family of Silentio may well remember that it is normal for me to spend an inordinate amount of my summer in Belgium. Far be it from me to actually enjoy the only season in Scotland worth sticking around for. Well . . . this year is no different. Yesterday, K. and I hopped on a flight bound for Charlerois, and then a car bound for the Belgian/Dutch border -- just in the nick of time to watch Belgium beat the Netherlands in a friendly (the Dutch, as has been their way the past couple of years, could hit everything just around the goal but the net). Anyway, for the next couple of weeks I'll be spending my time re-learning how to type on a Euro -- i.e., AZERTY -- keyboard (the letters, by the way, aren't nearly as difficult to remember as the obscure punctuation like brackets and such), reading William Gaddis' The Recognitions, and tidying up my thesis' new, souped-up first chapter, 'On Beginning to Characterize: An Introduction'. In the meantime, I might also steal out into the Belgium night, to enjoy a fine beer and a movie. Perhaps even, per Scott Martens' acerbic review, I might just need a beer to make it through The Day After Tomorrow. (I remember seeing the preview for this one when I saw The Passion, and even that sphincter-tighteningly bad of a movie didn't make this thing look good.) And yet, because one can only see so much of the Olsen twins -- one of their movies, is as a matter of fact, on tv right now, and I definitely remember cringing at the television show when it was on over here last summer -- and Belgium is where I shell out the Euro to see shitty movies, I will very likely buy myself a stinky kebob ball, a cone of frites, and enjoy myself as New York City and Donnie Darko are frozen over.

Oh, and yes, I hope to blog quite a bit.