auto da fe

Mr Cameron will show two of the coffins at a news conference in New York on Monday.

"It doesn't get bigger than this," he said in a press release.

"We've done our homework; we've made the case; and now it's time for the debate to begin."

Local residents said they were pleased with the attention the tomb has drawn.

"It will mean our house prices will go up because Christians will want to live here," one woman said.

Children of Men
In addition to working on my PhD, i work in a restaurant. i've waited tables at the same restaurant off and on since high school. We offer the oxymoronic casual fine dining fare, and so it is not unusual to see the president of the university a few tables away from a homeless woman a few tables away from some sorority girls a few tables away from some punks. Therefore, i was not suprised to see 5 senior tenured professors from my department lingering in the lobby last night, waiting for take-out.
Heads bent to each other in agreement rather than secrecy, a professor i work with was thusly cooly dismissed:

"X always seemed a bit flaky to me. How is she?"

"X? Obviously anorexic, but alright."

The Departed
Dacus sent me a text message a few minutes ago that read: "At unveiling of Jesus tomb." i responded: "Please explain. Is this a video game?" Dacus works for a men's magazine, so this seemed a likely option. He responded: "No. The Real Thing. Google it." So i google. Yep. According to the BBC this morning, James Cameron, director of the Titanic and The Terminator, has made a documentary which argues that this is the "real" tomb of JC. i send back a text reporting my findings. Yes, he's here, Dacus replies. And some other guy just compared the resurrection to a Michael Jackson video and Jesus' family to the Kennedys.

Little Miss Sunshine
i had no intention of watching the Oscars last night, but the television was on at work, so i sat down to see how my tastes stacked up against those of the academy. i hated the Departed. Its lazy lazy misogny, its boring boring attempts at shocking twists, its needless convolutions stacked upon needless convolutions. The night Dacus and i saw it we had made plans to join up with two of his friends, a very recently married couple, after the movie for drinks. This would be my first time meeting them. They'd seen The Departed the week before and liked it. This initial disjunct settled the whole evening into a tone of boring mutual condescent.

Dreamgirls
From Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning":

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A Voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.